Question raised by: Haruko Wakabayashi

Discussants: Michael Wachutka, David Lurie, Jacqueline Stone, Stephen Miller

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Dear Members,

Does anybody know of a summary or translation (complete or sections) in
English of the biographical text of Shotoku Taishi?

Also, I'd like to know if there are any articles in English on Ippen shonin
eden (Ippen hijiri-e). I do have the two articles in the "Flowing Traces."

yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

Haruko Wakabayashi

>Does anybody know of a summary or translation (complete or sections) in
>English of the biographical text of Shotoku Taishi?

...I hate to seem beating the same drum over and over again ("... and in case you read German..."), but I cannot think of any study on Shotoku Taishi more detailed and exhaustive than this one, but alas, it is in German:

Bohner, Hermann: _Shotoku Taishi_. [Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens; Supplementband 15], Tokyo: OAG, 1940.

In 1033 (!) pages Bohner translates and comments on virtually *all* existing texts, temple-scrolls, inscripts on statues (you name it) concerned with Shotoku Taishi, and includes all then-existing secondary studies in his comments. (Only Shotoku's commentaries on sutras (Hokke, Sho^man, Yuiman) are not translated completely but only used as sources.
The translation of "Shotoku Taishi Denryaku (I assume you refer to this text when mentioning 'a biographical text'?), juxtaposed and enhanced with passages from other sources, can be found on pp. 55-169
An introduction to that text is on pp. 24-32.

However, if you wish for something in English, Penny Herbert, a specialist on Chinese History, presented a paper comparing the biographies of Shotoku Taishi and Li Lin-fu at the 38th International Conference of Orientalists in Japan in May 1993. This might be a place to start.
A very brief summery of the presentation can be found in _The Toho Gakkai (Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan. Kokusai toho gakusha kaigi kiyo)_; No. 38 (1993), pp. 164-165.

Best regards,

Michael Wachutka

Ph.D. candidate in Japanes Intellectual History at Tuebingen University, Germany
Research Fellow at German Institute of Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo

Regarding translations of Shotoku Taishi biographies, a partial English
translation of the early Jogu shotoku ho-o teisetsu (KANJI_)
by William Deal can be found in _Religions of Japan in Practice_ (George
J. Tanabe, ed.; Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1999); unfortunately, the numerous omissions are not specified, so
anyone interested in getting a sense of the entire text must carefully
compare the translation with the original. I do not have a copy of this
useful anthology in front of me, but I would not be surprised if it
contains translations of some later Shotoku materials as well.

I briefly examined the early Shotoku cult in my dissertation, and plan
on putting together a more extensive study of his significance (or lack
thereof) in early Japan, so I also would be grateful to learn of
western-language studies in addition to Bohner's massive work.

---David Lurie

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Columbia University
www.columbia.edu/~dbl11
39 Claremont Ave. Apt. 53, New York NY 10027

You might want to contact Kevin G. Carr, a Ph.D. student in Art and
Archaeology at Princeton who is writing a dissertation on the cult of
Prince Shotoku in the medieval period and is looking at literary sources
as well as iconographic materials.

On the Ippen hijiri-e, see James Harlan Foard, ""Ippen Shonin and
Popular Buddhism in Kamakura Japan," Ph.D. dissertation (Stanford
1977). As I recall, it contains a fairly detailed summary of the text.

Sincerely,
Jackie Stone

Laura Kaufman's Ph.D. dissertation was on the Ippen hijiri-e (I know because I wrote in all the characters in the glossary for it!). The bibliographic info for that dissertation may be in the Flowing Traces chapter (I don't have the book in front of me), but if it isn't, please contact me and I'll put you in contact with her (she teaches at Manhattanville College).
Best,
Stephen