This is a virtual event. Click here to register for the Zoom link. 

The thirteenth-century nun Mugai Nyodai (1223–1298) is associated in the minds of many with an endearing poem expressing her epiphany on a bright full moon night when the bottom falls out of her water bucket and the moon vanishes. That poem, however, and the entire story that leads up to it—a story of how a simple maiden trained herself to do Zen meditation—has nothing to do with the historical figure of Mugai Nyodai. It belongs in the fictional story of Chiyono. The real Nyodai, when stripped of Chiyono and freed from the military Kamakura parentage belonging to another woman, Mujaku, emerges as a dynamic religious figure from within the Kyoto nobility. Nyodai received transmission from the immigrant Chinese Zen priest, Wuxue Zuyuan (Mugaku Sogen, also Bukkō Kokushi; 1226–1286), and founded two temples, one for training nuns, Keiaiji, and one as the Kyoto center of Mugaku Sogen’s teachings.

The recent bilingual publication Mugai Nyodai: The Woman Who Opened Zen Gates reconstructs the life of the historical Nyodai based on close readings of primary sources. It establishes Mujaku as a woman in her own right with her own biography distinct from Nyodai’s and posits how and where the identities of the three women fused into a single legend. It also describes the centuries of continued veneration of Nyodai as practiced by Zen nuns and priests in five surviving temples (three descendant from Keiaiji) that regard her as their founder.

The webinar features two of the book’s authors, Monica Bethe and Patricia Fister, who will discuss aspects of the book and share some of the extant portrait statues and paintings of Nyodai and other material objects associated with her.

Mugai Nyodai The Woman Who Opened Zen Gates is available for international shipping at amazon.co.jp.

Monica BETHE

Professor Emerita, Otani University; Director of the Medieval Japanese Studies Institute/Center for the Study of Women, Buddhism, and Cultural History, Kyoto. Fields: Textiles, Japanese culture.

Publications: “Of Surplices and Certificates: Tracing Mugai Nyodai’s Kesa” in Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan (Brill, 2018). Co-author, Transmitting Robes, Linking Minds: The World of Buddhist Kasāya (Kyoto National Museum, 2010). Co-editor, Amamonzeki, A Hidden Heritage: Treasures of the Japanese Imperial Convents (Sankei Shinbun, 2009).

Patricia FISTER

Professor Emerita, International Research Center for Japanese Studies; Director of Research at the Medieval Japanese Studies Institute/Center for the Study of Women, Buddhism, and Cultural History, Kyoto. Fields: Japanese art history, women artists, imperial convent culture.

Publications: “The Auspicious Dragon Temple: Kyoto’s “Forgotten” Imperial Buddhist Convent, Zuiryūji,” in Japan Review 36 (2022). Co-editor, Amamonzeki, A Hidden Heritage: Treasures of the Japanese Imperial Convents (Sankei Shinbun, 2009). Art by Buddhist Nuns: Treasures from the Imperial Convents of Japan (Medieval Japanese Studies Institute, 2003). Kinsei no josei gakatachi: Bijutsu to jendā (Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1994).