Geomancy and Daoism

[Brian Goldsmith]

Hello all, This is not a Japan question per se, but... One of my students is enthralled by Chinese geomancy and Daoism.  I am not even sure where to start with geomancy.  I did a search using geomancy as a title and subject term. and just about everything I turned up (in English) looked dicey. I know sturdy works on Daoism, but he is interested in Daoism as it fit into the larger project of Chinese philosophy in the latter part of the Imperial Era. Thanks. Brian Goldsmith Lenoir-Rhyne University

[Joseph P. Elacqua]

Brian,

I seem to recall that Stephan Feuchtwang did an excellent monograph on
feng shui (which is what I assume you mean by "geomancy").
Unfortunately, it's been a long time since I read it, so I can't
remember quite what time periods it covers. However, if nothing else,
it should be a decent starting point for your student.

Anthropological analysis of Chinese geomancy / Stephan D.R. Feuchtwang.
Feuchtwang, Stephan.
Vientiane, Laos: Vithagna, 1974.

I seem to recall there being a newer edition of this text as well, but
I don't have that information right on hand. It should come up easily
enough in WorldCat though.


-- Joseph P. Elacqua
Mohawk Valley Community College

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[Brian Goldsmith]

Hello Joseph. Feuchtwang's work is one of the items that kept coming up.  Thanks for recommending it.  Not that I know anything at all, but it received rather mixed reviews on JSTOR.  I just thought I would pass that along. Thank you very much for your time. Brian Goldsmith --- On Sun, 2/10/13, Joseph P. Elacqua <joseph....@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney]

The classics in anthropology is Maurice Freeman 1969 (Geomancy , Proceedings of the RAI), and Marcel Granet.

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[Avery M.]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 2:54 AM, Brian Goldsmith <shinda...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> I know sturdy works on Daoism, but he is interested in Daoism as it fit into the larger project of Chinese philosophy in the latter part of the Imperial Era.
>

Do you mean the imperial era as in the kindai, 1868-1945? Because I
just turned up a book that fits right into that range, and it appears
to have good citations, although I disagree with its thesis.

Ole Bruun, /Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination Between State
Orthodoxy and Popular Religion/
University of Hawai'i, 2003

I find no Japanese interest in feng shui in the kindai, at least as
far as CiNii reports. Another Japanese invented his own form of
geomancy in 1949, but I am saving that information for my own book...

Yours,
Avery Morrow

[Kristina Buhrman]

On Feb 10, 2013, at 4:10 PM, "Avery M." <ave...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I find no Japanese interest in feng shui in the kindai, at least as
> far as CiNii reports. Another Japanese invented his own form of
> geomancy in 1949, but I am saving that information for my own book...

While the term fengshui might not have been known (and Aramata Hiroshi claims credit for introducing the Japanese to fengshui with Teito monogatari, at least according to his introduction to the 1995 bunko edition), I don't think it's safe to say that there was no Japanese interest in the subject of geomancy (specifically, site-reading and siting) during either the pre-war or early modern periods. If you run a search using the term 家相 kasō, instead, you should find more material. There have been a few works of history on the subject in Japan that I've come across in bookstores (for example, http://www.amazon.co.jp/江戸時代の家相説-村田-あが/dp/4639015879 ) that use that terminology.

How deep the resemblance goes--whether it's merely a question of how the question of siting a house is named, or whether and how the Japanese tradition diverged, I have to leave to specialists on the early modern.

Kristina Buhrman buhr...@missouri.edu, kristina...@gmail.com
Visiting Assistant Professor for East Asian Religions
University of Missouri

[guel...@waseda.jp]

Hello, all

Suzuki Ikkei wrote a paper on Feng sui and the architecture in
Interdisciplinary Studies of Japanese Buddhism No. 4 (2005), PP. 41-62
(鈴木一馨、「禅宗寺院と風水との関係について」日本仏教綜合研究 )

Suzuki told me, that not only 家相 kasō, but also 人相 jinsō can be
traced back to Chinese sources, so you have to look at all materials.
(They are quite funny. I collected some examples from the later
Tokugawa period.)

Niels

[Tucker, John]

I haven't followed this closely so my apologies if this repeats: try accessing Waseda Wine
http://wine.wul.waseda.ac.jp/ , Waseda University's online catalog, and search for 風水 (fūsui) as the content or title -- there are 21 entries, including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean sources.

A closely related but far broader topic is on'yōdō 陰陽道, also read inyōdō, and onmyōdō. This "way of yin and yang" was known in ancient Japan (from Nara and Heian times forward) --- there was an imperial office, the onmyō-ryō 陰陽寮, that was part of the ritsuryō legal-administrative framework of imperial government. Another closely related topic is gogyō 五行, the five processes of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. A search of

 

Lee Butler's article, "The Way of Yin and Yang: A Tradition Revived, Sold, Adopted," Monumenta Nipponica 51/2 (1996), pp. 189-217, is the only English language study of onmyōdō I know.

 

A search of 五行陰陽道 as a word/topic in Waseda Wine produces 57 entries.

 

Surely someone has mentioned Emperor Kanmu's decision to move the imperial capital from Nara to a basin surrounded on three sides -- west, north, and east -- by mountains, and with a river running through it, n-s? And then to name it Heian.

 

John A. Tucker, PhD | Professor | Department of History | Brewster A-317 | East Carolina University | Greenville, NC 27858 | 252.328.1028 | Tuck...@ecu.edu

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From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Kristina Buhrman [buh...@usc.edu]
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2013 5:25 PM
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Subject: Re: [PMJS] Geomancy and Daoism

[Robert Borgen]

I was hoping someone more up-to-date than I would bring up the connection between feng shui and equivalent practices, known by other names, in early Japan.  Tucker's helpful comments point this out but omit two useful sources that should be familiar, at least to old-timers on this list:

Bernard Frank, Kata-imi et kata-tagae: Étude sur les interdits de direction a l'époque Heian (originally published 1958; new edition, College de France, Institut des hautes etudes japonaises; 1998)

Felicia Bock, Classical Learning and Taoist Practices in Early Japan, with a Translation of Books XVI and XX of the Engi-Shiki (Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1985)

Those who don't read French may prefer the Japanese translation of the former:  Kataimi to katatagae  Heian jidai no hōgaku kinki ni kansuru kenkyū (Iwanami, 1989).

Bock translates the chapters on the Onmyō-ryō (the reading used in Heian jidaishi jiten) from Engi-Shiki.  The book has problems, but, given the paucity of other materials in English, it is still worth a look.  

Finally, to repeat something I noted on this list a few years ago, the term "Daoism" itself is problematic, since it can refer to an extraordinarily wide range of beliefs and practices.  I suspect that "feng shui," "kasō," "onmyōdō," and other related forms of geomancy can all be treated as forms of "Daoism" in its broadest sense and illustrate the reason why some Japanese scholars have chosen to abandon the term--or at least its Japanese equivalent, "Dōkyō.

Robert Borgen

On Feb 11, 2013, at 8:11 AM, Tucker, John wrote:

I haven't followed this closely so my apologies if this repeats: try accessing Waseda Wine 
http://wine.wul.waseda.ac.jp/ , Waseda University's online catalog, and search for 風水 (fūsui) as the content or title -- there are 21 entries, including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean sources. 

A closely related but far broader topic is on'yōdō 陰陽道, also read inyōdō, and onmyōdō. This "way of yin and yang" was known in ancient Japan (from Nara and Heian times forward) --- there was an imperial officethe onmyō-ryō 陰陽寮, that was part of the ritsuryō legal-administrative framework of imperial government. Another closely related topic is gogyō 五行, the five processes of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. A search of

[Brian Goldsmith]

Hello Avery, When I said Imperial, I meant China from the Han to the Qing.  However, what you turned up strikes me as infinitely more interesting that a lot of the suggestions sent to me.  I will share this with my student, and it is definitely going on my reading list.  Thanks! Brian Brian Goldsmith Lenoir-Rhyne University LR box 7275 Hickory, NC 28603 828-328-7229 --- On Sun, 2/10/13, Avery M. <ave...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Avery M. <ave...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [PMJS] Geomancy and Daoism

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[Brian Goldsmith]

Sorry all, I thought my last e-mail was private to Avery.  I was trying to show my enthusiasm for a topic I would never have poked around in unless a student asked.  My apologies.  That you to all those who took the time to send responses.  Sat down this afternoon with the student who posed the original question.  He was excited at all of the sources and surprised that professional forums like this existed to support specialists. Thank you and sorry.

Brian Goldsmith Lenoir-Rhyne University LR box 7275 Hickory, NC 28603 828-328-7229 --- On Sun, 2/10/13, Avery M. <ave...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Avery M. <ave...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [PMJS] Geomancy and Daoism To: pm...@googlegroups.com Date: Sunday, February 10, 2013, 6:10 PM

[Ellen Van Goethem]

Dear Brian, all

If your student is interested in Chinese Daoism, he may want to contact Prof. Florian Reiter (Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin). He has been teaching and running Daoism workshops for years and has edited special issues of the Asien- und Afrika-Studien de Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin (esp. 38 and a forthcoming issue, all articles are in English). For the related practice of number mysticism, a good starting point would be Prof. Stephen Field (I'll happily provide contact details for both off list).

Kristina is correct in pointing out that 風水 in Japan was not used until quite recent. She mentions 家相, which is related to houses. Other early Japanese terms for practices of site divination include 墓相, 地相 (also 相地) and 四神相応 (i.e. a site with a mountain to the north, a river to the east, a plain with stagnant water to the south, and a road to the west). A good starting point to find when and where these terms were used is Kojiruien (esp. the 方技部 volume).

As for the siting of Nara and Heian, information in the primary sources is scarce. For Nara we have a reference stating "the four gods fit the charts and the site is protected by three mountains" (Wado gannen, 2nd month, 15th day). For Heian, the only reference is "the mountains and rivers are beautiful" (Enryaku 13, 10th month, 28th day). In primary sources, the explicit connection between the Heian capital and 四神相応 is not made until the 13th century in Heike Monogatari.

People wanting to know more about this topic, may be interested in my

"The Four Directional Animals in East Asia: A Comparative Analysis",  Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, 38, pp. 201-216

and 

"Pleasing the Four Gods: Shijin sōō (四神相応), Site Selection and Site Adaptation", Cultural Crossroads, Proceedings of the 26th International SAHANZ Conference, CD-rom, 2009 (I can send out a PDF).

Ellen

Dr. Ellen Van Goethem
Associate Professor
Kyushu University
Graduate School of Humanities
http://www.brill.com/nagaoka

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[B.M. Bodart-Bailey]

No written source, but since the discovery of Kitora kofun (キトラ古墳) in
1983 with its paintings of the four sacred animals guarding the four
directions, the early arrival of this Chinese tradition in Japan has been
established. (For descriptions and pictures see
http://www.asuka-park.go.jp/kitora/ and other sites.) The same four sacred
animals were also at the basis at the laying out of the city of Edo.
Unfortunately 玄武 , the turtle, guarding the north supposedly represented
by Mt. Fuji is a bit off direction. But 白虎, the white tiger guarding the
west and the road is still there today at least in name as Toranomon.
Seiryuu 青龍, the blue dragon of the east, was represented by the 平川 and
Suzaku 朱雀 of the south by the harbour and the ocean. Heian was of course
laid out according to the same principle, the south being represented by a
lake.

I've used this material for years in my course 日本の歴史と風土、so I am not
sure which source I originally consulted, but you will find it mentioned in
most Japanese publications of the planning of Edo.

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey
Department of Comparative Culture
Otsuma Women's University, Tokyo.

----- Original Message -----
From: <guel...@waseda.jp>
To: <pm...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: [PMJS] Geomancy and Daoism

[Tucker, John]

About the move to Heian-- it is interesting that official records don't mention why the location was chosen, but telling as well.  The relative silence was presumably due to on'yōdō 陰陽道 being an essentially esoteric teaching. Its practitioners -- select court officials certified in the mysteries of yin, yang, and the five processes -- surely did not think their reasoning was a matter of public information or court records. It seems a challenge to think that the arrangement of mountains, directions, waterways, plus the presence of Japan's largest natural lake on the other side of the higashiyama, was coincidence that went as unnoticed as it was unmentioned. Then again, saying that mountains and rivers are beautiful was perhaps a euphemism for saying they are auspicious 吉.

That aside, in Japan what was later called, especially in the West, fengshui, was associated with Shinto and often was influenced by the correlative system of the Han Confucian, Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179-104 BCE). Given the ties to the imperial court, in China and Japan, most likely the Confucian spin made the teaching credible in ways that pure Daoism would not have been.

Has the Yijing 易經 been mentioned yet?

John A. Tucker, PhD | Professor | Department of History | Brewster A-317 | East Carolina University | Greenville, NC 27858 | 252.328.1028 | Tuckerjo@ecu.edu

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ellen Van Goethem [evgo...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 8:57 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

[Kristina Buhrman]

On Feb 11, 2013, at 8:58 PM, "Tucker, John" <TUCK...@ecu.edu> wrote:

The relative silence was presumably due to on'yōdō 陰陽道 being an essentially esoteric teaching. Its practitioners -- select court officials certified in the mysteries of yin, yang, and the five processes -- surely did not think their reasoning was a matter of public information or court records.

While Heian's fit to the classic three-mountains, open-to-the-south form is rather amazingly convenient (and perhaps too convenient, once you account for the rivers that cut through it and flood), I do want to caution against reading too much into the techniques and expertise of the 8th-century Bureau of On'yō. The training was all held in-house, it is true, but the Council of State certainly felt justified in overruling Bureau decisions fairly early (as in late 9th-century deliberations over technical matters of eclipse prediction and preparation, where Council of State members cite the tennō=yang=sun equivalence as the reason to be concerned). Some of the "secret texts of the Kamo and Abe" (as they were later known) are first attested to in Japan by citations in legal documents. 

(Although Suzuki Ikkei has suggested using on'yōdō for the Bureau techniques, leaving onmyōdō for the later "popular religion," I am not certain that the field of expertise within the on'yō section of the Bureau of On'yō was specialized and monopolized enough to be considered a "dō" in the 8th and 9th centuries. I admit that I am still working my way through that argument, and may yet change my mind after sifting through the rest of the legal primary sources.)

There is not a lot of documentation of the activities of the Bureau and its members in the Rikkōkushi, although Ooms does summarize most of the legal cases that involved them in his most recent book. The logic of the Five Phases, I feel obligated to insist, was not solely the province of "onmyōji" by any means. Miyoshi Kiyoyuki is a prime example of a non-Bureau official who utilized Five Phase sources for rhetorical and political means. Furthermore, the occasional "press-ganging" of individuals into the Bureau is a fairly clear attestation of such expertise "outside" of those walls. (And persisted from the early 8th through to the 9th centuries, and in a more polite collaborative form into the 10th and early 11th.)

Rather than crediting a veil of secrecy over subjects relating Onmyōdō (and certainly, the Heian nobility of later periods were quite happy to discuss and critique predictions made by "onmyōji"), I think it's much better to blame the general paucity of primary sources from the time of Kanmu's move to contract Heian for any document or reasoning that may have been lost.

And of course, as Dong Zhongshu (oft cited) shows, Five Phase cosmology and indeed "magic" can be "Confucian" as easily as it can be "Daoist." While some of the more complex workings of the system--and, indeed, the mathematics required to work some of these systems--might be considered mysteries, yin-yang and Five Phase in the general sense at least appears as closer to common knowledge.

[Jiang Wu]

Thanks for all the great references. When we talk about fengshui and
geomancy in China and Japan, we should not forget that Koreans are
also deeply influenced. Here is an early book on this topic by a
Japanese scholar. Best. Jiang Wu, University of Arizona

Murayama Chijun村山智順, Chosen no fūsui朝鮮の風水. Reprint. Tokyo: Ryūkei
Shosha, 2003.

[Tucker, John]

Common knowledge? In Heian Japan ... I'm not sure who would be included in this common knowledge other than Buddhist clergy, priests, and aristocrats taught by them and the few dozen Confucians who might have been around.

Still, what of the Ekikyo 易經, or Book of Changes -- the font of so much divinatory thought and practice related to heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things between. Of course these texts and teachings -- including the 五行 were not exclusive to any line of thought or practice. I'm not sure who suggested as much. 

It remains questionable in my mind at least whether limited extant sources explains why the reasoning of a group of esoterics is not more open to daylight. Unless contested in their day --- and it would seem that even the uninitiated would have every reason to affirm that the Kyoto basin was a suitable site (as long as the selection process did not take place in July or August) -- they would not likely have felt the need to justify their decisions with too much exoteric reasoning. It would simply be out of character.

And that flooding in Kyoto can be a wonderful thing, especially if you are growing rice.

This is certainly not my line of research, however, and so I defer.

John A. Tucker, PhD | Professor | Department of History | Brewster A-317 | East Carolina University | Greenville, NC 27858 | 252.328.1028 | Tuckerjo@ecu.edu

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Kristina Buhrman [buh...@usc.edu]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 10:44 PM

To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] Geomancy and Daoism

[Ellen Van Goethem]

Three of the four animals also appear on the walls of Takamatsuzuka
kofun opened up in the 1970s (the Vermilion Bird was probably
destroyed when the tomb was looted in the 13th century). Even earlier
examples of the four beast are found on imported Chinese bronze
mirrors, at least three of which seem to date from the Qinglong era
(1st half 3rd c.) and were cast from the same mold.

The fact that Edo is possibly off (if it truly was established based
on feng shui principles as the village predates Tokugawa control) is
not really a problem. Original divination practices predate the
cardinal directions by several centuries and many texts merely use the
vague designations "front", "back", etc.

Pointing at Fuji for the Black Warrior seems a bit of a stretch,
though. Fuji may possibly be interpreted as the distant mountain
beyond the southern open plain, the so-called "facing mountain" - a
requirement in Chinese feng shui manuals. But I wonder if adding Fuji
to the list of "protector deities" of the city/capital isn't a later
invention.

Ellen


Dr. Ellen Van Goethem
Associate Professor
Kyushu University
Graduate School of Humanities
http://www.brill.com/nagaoka

[Ellen Van Goethem]

A possible reason for why the official records tell us nothing about the site selection of Heian is the fact that the first volumes of Nihon Koki where the entries should have been are lost. The Enryaku reference I mentioned earlier is from Nihon Kiryaku and, thus, the original entry may have been much longer.

Ellen

Dr. Ellen Van Goethem
Associate Professor
Kyushu University
Graduate School of Humanities
http://www.brill.com/nagaoka

[Ross Bender]

Since any discussion of Daoism and other mystical magical stuff in ancient Japan tends to drift quite quickly into hazy waters, let me point out the 2010 PMJS paper I coauthered with Zhao Lu. --"Research Note -- A Japanese Curriculum of 757".  The paper gives quite concrete evidence of who was to study what  by imperial decree  at this point in time. The curriculum is very straightforward, nothing secret or esoteric at all about it.

www.pmjs.org/pmjs-papers/papers-index/bender-zhao-j-curriculum

Ross Bender

http://rossbender.org/japan.html

[Tucker, John]

Regarding the esoteric interpretation of onmyōdō, two Japanese sources to consider are:

 

Onmyōdō no hon: nihonshi no yami o tsuranuku higi senjutsu no keifu

陰陽道の本 : 日本史の闇を貫く秘儀・占術の系譜

(Tōkyō : gakushūkenkyūsha, 1993), Vol. 6 in their Books Esoteria series (admittedly, an illustrated volume for beginners -- assuming somehow they had not heard about it previously).

 

A more scholarly volume advancing the esoteric interpretation is Murayama Shūichi's

Nihon onmyōdō shiwa 日本陰陽道史話 recently published by Heibonsha (2001), but originally published by Osaka shoseki, 1987. There Murayama includes chapters on yamabushi and onmyōdō and mikkyō 密教 and onmyōdō, discussing Kūkai's 空海 interest appropriation of onmyōdō.

 

Perhaps it's just me, but anything that's based on the hexagrams of the Yijing -- and onmyōdō and fengshui both are -- as well as the River Chart and the Luo Chart (Kato rakusho 河図洛書), seems esoteric. I am dense, no doubt.

 

John A. Tucker, PhD | Professor | Department of History | Brewster A-317 | East Carolina University | Greenville, NC 27858 | 252.328.1028 | Tuckerjo@ecu.edu

---

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Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 8:14 AM