ARTICLES Secret Knowledge on Childbirth and Women’s Reproductive Health in Early Medieval Japan

A//a A/(&ee6aEsoteric Textual Networks B%((1*+t knowledge on reproduction and birth has a long history. 1 Traveling over a long span of time from Central Asia and India to China and Korea, this knowledge was adopted in Japan as a part of a longue durée transmission of Buddhism.2 Recently, evidence has emerged that :nally helps us to reconstruct the processes by which such Buddhist knowledge on childbirth and women's reproductive health was formed in early medieval Japan.!e treatises and manuscripts that have resurfaced from Buddhist temple libraries and repositories demonstrate that scholar-monks, specializing mostly in esoteric traditions (mikkyō 密教), were able to create impressive ritual programs for protecting pregnant noble women and their unborn o8spring.!is evidence also indicates that the handwritten handbooks, ritual memoranda, and extensive encyclopedias compiled at esoteric temples contained secret knowledge on pregnancy and childbirth and could o8er solutions for every possible reproductive risk and worry to both highranking aristocratic women of childbearing age and their politically savvy and in=uential families.I wo%)( )*7e to thank the German Research Council (DFG) for its AN-1283/1-2 grant, which generously supported the initial stages of research on this topic for my project "Buddhism, Medicine, and Gender in 10th-14th Century Japan: Toward a Transcultural History of Women's Health in Pre-Modern East Asia," which was hosted by Heidelberg University from 2017-2021.I thank also Ghent University and its Special Research Fund (BOF), whose generous "Starting Grant" allowed me to continue the next stages of my research from 2021-2026.1 See the investigations of the Garbhāvakrānti Sutra by Kritzer (2014) and Langenberg (2017).Buddhist philosophical traditions focus on the mechanics of rebirth and accumulation of karma as the driving force behind the constant revolution of beings within the samsara cycle.See Schmithausen 1987;