Papers by Stephan N . Kory
(Special Issue on Religion and Science in China: Moving Beyond the “Two Cultures” Problem).
Asia Major, 3d ser., 2018
This article argues that the relative absence and trivialization of female diviners apparent in m... more This article argues that the relative absence and trivialization of female diviners apparent in medieval Chinese texts does not accurately reflect the presence of these figures in medieval Chinese society. It further contends that this dearth in representation is the direct result of a more comprehensive and sustained annihilation or marginalization of women in third-through ninth-century Chinese texts. Narrative accounts and the institutional perspectives on divination informing them are critically analyzed and compared to help de-trivialize the roles that female diviners played in medieval China. Comparative theories of divination will be considered to help expand the scope of our inquiry beyond activities explicitly identified as such, and the geographical, social, and practical variety one finds in medieval depictions of female diviners will be used as evidence of a much wider and more pervasive social presence than one finds today in received medieval records.
This article reviews received and recovered evidence of divination with bone and fire in early Ja... more This article reviews received and recovered evidence of divination with bone and fire in early Japan to identify and investigate a shift from deer scapulae to turtle shells that took place during the Nara-Heian transition, particularly within the state cult. It questions why this shift occurred and analyzes a detailed explanation of it found in a purportedly early Heian treatise on the divina-tory cracking of turtle plastrons known as the Shinsen kisōki (Newly compiled record of turtle omens). The Shinsen kisōki claims to have been authored by a group of men descended from a common genealogical line of ancestral kami associated with divination. It not only reveals much about why members of a handful of related clans would have promoted a change from scapulimancy to plastromancy at this point in history, but also much about how the state ritualization of the latter affected, and was affected by, other changes in state and local religion and politics during the late Nara and early Heian periods. keywords: deer-bone pyro-scapulimancy—pyro-plastromancy—Shinsen kisōki— Urabe and Nakatomi clans—state and local kami cults—Tsushima and Iki
Book Reviews by Stephan N . Kory
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Papers by Stephan N . Kory
Book Reviews by Stephan N . Kory