The faith and lifestyle of nuns and the historical changes in imperial convents as seen through medieval and early modern documents

Currently, there are twelve imperial convents in Kansai that are called ama monzeki. They had been called bikuni gosho during the medieval and early modern periods. Recently, research on medieval bikuni gosho has developed strikingly, but research on early modern bikuni gosho is virtually nonexistent, because there had been no surveys of their documents. Yet, these ama monzeki house many documents from the mid-Edo period. Our current project has been to survey the documents of the following ama monzeki : Hokyoji, Yorin an, Koshoin, Reiganji, Jijuin and Chuguji. We have created an index of documents that will serve as the basis for future research. We have clarified the historical changes these convents underwent. The bikuni gosho of the early modern period were inhabited by princesses and other aristocratic women. They wrote the documents now preserved at the ama monzeki. From their contents, we can see that the nuns actively ran the convents and that they worked politically to increase their status. Previous research concluded that bikuni gosho were places aristocratic women were confined, but we have shown that these nuns enjoyed active social roles. This could only have been brought to light by our document survey. We also clarified-through surveys of the Buddhist ritual and ceremony manuals, of their literary materials including waka poetry and classical books, and of their art and handiwork-the unique culture of the bikuni gosho that unified the life of the court with that of the temple. Because documents dating from the modern period survive in a volume much greater than we anticipated, we were able to trace the historical changes of imperial lineage temples under the religious policies of the Meiji regime. This research project yielded many results.