253 The Embryonic Generation of the Perfect Body Chapter 7 The Embryonic Generation of the Perfect Body: Ritual Embryology from Japanese Tantric Sources Lucia Dolce Buddhism, as well as other Asian traditions, developed distinct theories on the process of the generation of the human body. These theories constitute the ru- bric of Buddhist embryology. The Indian and Tibetan context of such discourse has received considerable scholarly attention.1 In contrast, the discursive and ritual practices of Japanese Buddhism have remained little explored. The main reason why such an analysis has not been pursued is to be sought in the percep- tion of Japanese modern scholarship that these theories represented heretical interpretations of Buddhism. Embryological practices in Japanese Buddhism have so far been connected to the infamous Tachikawa-ryū 立川流, a Tantric lineage that has been characterised as a heterodox school.2 This perception * This paper is part of a larger research project on Buddhist embryology in Japan. I am grateful to the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust for a grant that has allowed me to carry out archival research in Japan; to Abe Yasurō for providing access to primary documents; and to Itō Satoshi for sharing his findings with me. Preliminary versions of this study have been presented at the universities of Nagoya, Tsukuba, and Waseda, and have greatly benefited from the comments and questions put forward there. 1 Among more recent works, see, for instance, Robert Kritzer, “Life in the Womb: Conception and Gestation in Buddhist Scripture and Classical Indian Medical Literature,” in Imagining the Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture, Jane Marie Law and Vanessa R. Sasson, eds. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 73–90; Robert Kritzer, Garbhāvakrānti sūtra (The Sūtra on Entry into the Womb) (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2014); Amy Paris Langenberg, “Like Worms Falling from a Foul-smelling Sore” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2008); Frances Garrett, Religion, Medicine, and the Human Embryo in Tibet (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2008). 2 Much has been written on the Tachikawa-ryū heterodoxy. See, for instance, Mizuhara Gyōei 水原堯榮, Jakyō Tachikawa-ryū no kenkyū 邪教立川流の研究 (Kyoto: Shinbundō, [1923, 1931], 1968); Moriyama Shōshin 守山聖真, Tachikawa jakyō to sono shakaiteki haikei no kenkyū 立川邪教とその社会的研究 (Tokyo: Rokuyaen, 1965); and Manabe Shunshō 真鍋俊照, Jakyō Tachikawa-ryū 邪教・立川流 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, [1999], 2002). In recent years Iyanaga Nobumi has revisited this portrayal, arguing that the historical Tachikawa-ryū was a small but legitimate T ōmitsu lineage. For a summary of his argument in English, see his “Tachikawa-ryū,” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, Charles Orzech, Henrik © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10. 1163/9789004306523 _ 009