It has often been assumed that, following their ninth-century exclusion from state-sponsored monastic ordination platforms, Japanese women had little access to tonsure ceremonies that their contemporaries would have recognized as authentic. This study questions that received narrative by examining the elaborate and formalized Buddhist ordination traditions of elite Heian- and Kamakura-period women. The ceremonies cultivated and maintained by these women were based not on the vinaya orthodoxy of the sangha but rather on the nyūdō, or lay novice, ordination procedures popular at court. Although nyūdō ordinations did not render ordinands full-fledged members of the monastic community and, as such, were not deemed “official” by Buddhist institutions, historical records suggest that Heian- and Kamakura-period courtiers preferred the nyūdō mode of renunciation to orthodox vinaya modes. Placed within the greater context of court culture, then, the tonsure ceremonies of elite women gain a sense of “official-ness” and authenticity not recognized in studies focused on vinaya orthodoxy.
