Making Dōgen: Hagiographical Strategies of Legitimization in Medieval Sōtō Zen Buddhism

This paper investigates how the biography, work, and legacy of Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), the supposed founder of the Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition, was manipulated in medieval esoteric transmission materials known as kirigami 切紙 or “cut paper slips.” Whereas much scholarship postulates a recovery of Dōgen’s lost importance during the Tokugawa period, and in the course of Sōtō sectarian reform, the paper argues that such recovery happened against a backdrop of constant, esoteric reinvention of the founder’s hagiography during the medieval period, a reinvention that, just as the supposed Tokugawa recovery, served concrete needs for legitimizing sectarian practices and doctrinal innovations in the face of a changing, and often hostile, religio-political landscape. In addition, it challenges perspectives that would argue for a simple continuity between medieval and early modern hermeneutical stances by demonstrating that Dōgen’s Tokugawa rebirths were effected by reinscribing the founder’s life and thought into a new epistemological regime.