The Significance of Excrement in the Buddhist Narratives of Medieval Japan

Pandey explores the polyvalent role of excrement in medieval Japanese Buddhist texts. While often deployed to illustrate the body&s;s impurity and karmic retribution—such as hungry ghosts consuming bodily waste—faecal matter could also arouse compassion, enabling salvation and enlightenment. Setsuwa tales and iconoclastic figures like Zōga highlight how excrement destabilized binaries of pure and impure, sacred and worldly, echoing Tendai and Zen non-dual thought. Contrasting with medieval Christian demonization of the body&s;s lower realm, these narratives reveal historically specific frameworks of embodiment and affect, challenging essentialist claims of Japanese uniqueness while situating them in wider comparative contexts.