Andrew Macomber

Buddhist medicine has recently emerged as a key subfield within Buddhist studies, yet no previous research has comprehensively examined the Buddhist engagement with bodily diseases and epidemics. This project remedies this gap by shedding light on Buddhist intellectual and therapeutic responses to novel diseases during Japan’s medieval period (1100–1600). In particular, it examines the Japanese Buddhist imagination of pathogens, which Buddhists saw as person-like agents that could not only make people ill but also warp their moral character from the inside of the body. This project thus unearths an unexamined Buddhist pantheon in medieval Japan—not of gods and demons in the traditional sense, but a pantheon of pathogens. In this way, it demonstrates the pervasive impact of Buddhist discourse and practice on the imagination of disease in Japan.

Although Buddhist medicine has become an important subfield in Buddhist studies, no previous work to date has extensively examined the Buddhist engagement with epidemics and other bodily diseases. This project seeks to remedy this gap by shedding light on the Buddhist response to epidemics and other emergent diseases in history, and tracing the longer cultural impact of those responses. In particular, this project examines Buddhist ritual and medical responses to the rise of unprecedented bodily afflictions in medieval Japan (1100–1400 AD), focusing on the Buddhist treatment of “corpse-vector disease,” a contagious disease imagined to spread by corpses. In so doing, it provides the first account of how Buddhist monks established and maintained their status as unrivaled healers in Japan.