Une perle rare : la "nonne" Nyoi et l'idéologie médiévale

Résumé En

This article focuses around the life of a Japanese nun called Nyoi whose biography appears in the Genkō shakusho. She was the second consort of Emperor Junna and her life mingles Taoist Buddhist and "indigenous" elements to make her appear as the figure of the ideal wife, of the immaculate woman, and of an avatar of Nyoirin Kannon. Through a close reading of different episodes in her legendary biography, many motifs appear that played a crucial role in medieval Japanese ideology and religious discourse. The first motif concerns dragons, or snakes, the second is the about the Jade woman and the last one is about feminine transgression. A close scrutiny of the symbolic and ideological meaning of those various elements in Nyoi's biography points to the relationship between Buddhism and the Imperial Court. Biographies of ideal women have to be read in the light of gender and political rhetoric in order to be understood. Through a subtle and complex interplay, all symbolic layers are linked together by the theme of power and of its constitution through the manipulation of symbols and ideology. In this light hagiography becomes one of the central places to look for the constitution of the hermeneutics of power in Japanese medieval society.