Mummies
One of the stranger and lesser known historical practices in Japan is a unique process of mummification undertaken by dozens of Buddhist monks in the mountains of Honshū, the country’s main island. Since January 2006 Chris has, with friends and colleagues, made four trips in search of mummies (known as sokushinbutsu) and seen the remains or resting places of eleven mummies in Yamagata, Niigata, Ibaraki, Fukushima, and Kyoto Prefectures.
Articles:
The first of these articles is a general introduction to the topic; the second a philosophical analysis of the ethical implications of the practice.
Ritual Self-Mummification: The Strange Case of Japan’s Auto-Deities (2007)
The monk undertakes a 3000-day quest that ends with him being buried alive. He limits himself to a diet of buckwheat dough, hazelnuts, and nutmeg for 1000 days, then restricts himself to bark and the roots of pine trees for another 1000-day period, towards the end of which he starts to drink a toxic tea that begins preserving his internal organs. He is then entombed while still alive and left to die. Once exhumed, he has become sokushinbutsu, a living god, and is placed in a shrine to be worshipped. Sound unbelievable? It’s not—though outlawed now, the mummified remains of the Shingon sect’s ascetic monks are still present in small Buddhist temples scattered throughout Japan’s main island …
Sokushinbutsu: Esoteric Buddhism and the Ethics of Altruistic Suicide (2008) [pdf] [Abstract]
An ethical analysis of the process of ritual self-mummification, from the perspective of both Buddhist and Western ethical frameworks.
Read at the November 2008 Third International Applied Ethics Conference, Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy, Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University.
Photo Gallery coming soon. More publications on this topic to come … in time.
Further reading:
If you have access to JSTOR, the following article is essential reading:
Ichiro Hori , Self-Mummified Buddhas in Japan: An Aspect of the Shugen-dō (“Mountain Asceticism”) Sect in History of Religions (1962) 1 (2): 222–242.