Description:

Attested as early as the Nara period (710-794), objects enshrined within Buddhist sculptures (zōnai nōnyūhin 像内納入品) constitute valuable evidence to deepen our understanding of religious practices and social life in premodern Japan. All these artefacts (relics, sacred scriptures, images, daily life items or body parts) narrate the stories of the people who commissioned, produced, and worshipped them.

This presentation peculiarly examines the question of emotions, a new approach to analysing deposited items in Japan. One of the main issues that I am addressing is how their materiality embodies feelings’ intensity, such as love, familial bonds or intense sorrow. Indeed, beyond their religious and soteriological roles, I interpret these deposits as objects embedded with devotees’ emotions meant to be shared with Buddhist deities once enshrined within their living bodies. Since numerous commissions were connected to the dead, my investigation tackles issues surrounding mourning practices, especially how to take care of the loved ones who disappeared and ensure their salvation. How to deal with their remains and private possessions? My research explores one possible method, namely placing these intimate artefacts (personal items and body parts) within statues, under the direct protection of the Buddha, while also functioning as mediators to connect with the divine. Thus, a karmic bond (kechien) can be established not only through the objects placed within the deities but also via the encapsulated emotions, seeking to tie a powerful connection with Buddhist deities. Therefore, the inside of the icons, the living bodies of the
deities, become a zone of exchange, communion and reconciliation between the realms of the living, the dead and the divine.

Elodie Pascal is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Edinburgh. She is researching items encapsulated within Buddhist sculptures in premodern Japan. Before moving to Edinburgh, she graduated from the Ecole du Louvre in Art History in 2015 and from the INALCO (Paris) in Japanese Language and Civilisation in 2020. Since the beginning of her PhD in 2020, she has been a recipient of the Khyentse Foundation scholarship and an active member of Edinburgh Buddhist Studies. In the fall of 2024, she started a new project as co-organiser of the Premodern Bodies Cluster at the University of Edinburgh, an interdisciplinary community of scholars and students interested in the cultural histories of the human body.