This study is an attempt to show how the poetic figure of the acrostic was constructed in ninth century Japan as a tantric semiological implement in a poetic discourse, in which poets working in Sino-Japanese or kanabun constructed kami cultic ritual in various forms and contexts within the broad framework of Kukai’s tantric Buddhist semiology. Three poetic texts, a Sino-Japanese poem by Kukai and two prose-poem texts from Kokin wakashu and/or Ise monogatari, all of which contain an acrostic, are analysed and interpreted, and evidence from several of Kukai’s expositions on semiology philosophy of language) and hermeneutics, is adduced in support. The suggestion is that the acrostic was construed as an articulation of Kukai’s metaphor for the limitlessness of meanings of the mantra syllables, the intersection of vertical and horizontal meanings, which was associated with the experience of nyuga ganyu 入我我入 (Skt. ahaṃkara).
目次
Introduction 165 1. Acrostics 167 1.1 The acrostic in Elation 171 2. Kukai’s esoteric meaning and its metaphors 178 3. Kukai’s hermeneutics of mantra and Elation 183 4. Reconsidering the kana acrostics 192 Conclusion 199 References 199
