In medieval times Kumano-Gongen and Hakusan-Gongen were each identified with Izanagi or Izanami. But the correspondence was so unstable that it must have taken a great deal of effort to arrange the myth of creation of heaven and earth in contemporary style. This can be ascertained in the esoteric discourses of Kokin-waka-shū-kanjō-kuden and Gyokuden-jinpi which unfolded the significance of worshipping the ancient deities in the shrines all over the country.

In medieval times Mount Hiei was a center of poetical activities almost equal to Nanto or Heijōkyō. But little academic attention has been paid to it because few poetry collections compiled there are extant. The sacred mountain also played an important role in “uta-awase” poetry contests among monks, and fortunately there are some documents about them. The aim of this article is to analyze those poetry contests held at Mudōji and other temples of Mount Hiei in the late Heian Period and explicate the cultural background of the mountain's poetical activities while critically referring to Boku Hagitani's argument about them.

In the third volume of Gukan-shō Jien elaborated on the genealogy of such great persons as Prince Shōtoku, Fujiwara-no-Kamatari, Sugawara-no-Michizane, and Ryōgen, for he believed all of them were reincarnations of Kannon or Guanyin. This extraordinary idea has been criticized for its political prejudice because most of the personages were closely related to the regent's family. This article, however, relocates it in the tradition of the esoteric teaching of the Tendai School to point out an epistemological interaction between religion and history in Gukan-shō.

The Buddhist notion of “myō” (written in a Chinese character as 冥) or divine invisibility has been now intensively studied in the field of the history of Japanese ideas. This article considers it from the perspective of literary study to explore its relation to deities and dream through the analysis of Myōe's discourse of divine manifestation in his dream. The concept of “myō” seems to be parallel to that of otherness found in the teaching of the Tendai School and the art of dreaming in esoteric Buddhism.

Myōe is known as a monk who introduced green tea in Japan. According to Myōe-shōnindenki, another monk Yōsai brought green tea seeds from China and advised Myōe to plant them at the temple. The aim of this article is to review the episode from an interdisciplinary perspective of literary, historical, and religious studies. Here Yōsai's career is also focused on for a more exact understanding of the historical background of the episode. To reread Myōe-shōnindenki in a broader cultural context will reveal how the history of Japanese green tea was originated and established.

Hōnen's preaching to Taira-no-Shigehira in the tenth volume of Heike-monogatari has been repeatedly discussed among scholars of the war epic. The monk's teaching seems to be inseparable from the narrative's moral intention. In an attempt to weave a literary method out of religious studies, I hope that this article will serve as an interdisciplinary bridge between religion and literature.

In Buddhist cosmology Munetsuchi, a legendary pond in the Himalayas, occupies an important place in the painting of Tianzhu which forms a counterpart to that of Mount Meru, the center of the East Asian world order. Through the analysis of discourses and images of Munetsuchi in Daitō-saiiki-ki, Nihon-shumi-shotennzu at the Harvard Library, and other Japanese and Chinese Buddhist writings, this article argues that the icon of the garden fountain in Genjō-sanzō-e was modeled after the pond. Thus Munetsuchi had an immeasurable influence on the religious and literary imaginations of medieval East Asia.