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Art representing the Buddha often relates scriptures relating the 32 transcendental attributes of his body. Scriptures often describe his golden hue or the light coming from his body. Artists represent this through flat disks signifying \"his spiritual glow,\" known as the \"mandorla.\" One popular design of the Heian period was the Buddha Yakushi on whose mandorla sat seven smaller Buddhas. This essay examines this design. It traces the history of the iconographical transformation of Buddha Yakushi, focusing on the changes in mandorlas.

The conventional image of a state-driven Japanese conversion to Buddhism, from the top down, amidst a static Confucian empire inhabited by inert subsistence-level peasant villagers, obscures the extent to which Japan, prior to circa 700, was an immigrant society with pronounced maritime orientations. These oceanic interests connected Japan with the wider, still too little understood, world of trade and immigration that was actively bridging the distances between continental East Asia, the South Seas, and India. International trade spread both tangible and intangible commodities, including ideas, and served as the vehicle for the propagation of Buddhism. Japan, while occupying the far northeastern fringe of this old-world trading community, was swept up in the general Buddhist transformation.

Residual orality in ancient Japan is explored here through the little-known \"Womë-no\" poem in \"Harima Fudoki,\" recorded c. A.D. 714. Through it, we examine the use of punning, and thereby recognize three main points hitherto unnoticed. The first is that the kō/otsu distinctions of Old Japanese were largely ignored for the purpose of punning. Secondly, punning could involve mental substitution of a synonym to evoke the relevant thought association. Thirdly, we discover that puns could hang on chiastic reversal. It is argued that all three of these devices are features of residual orality in ancient Japan, and it is demonstrated that they could be used in combination to convey to the audience an extremely cryptic or esoteric message. In short, this paper not only provides a deeper analysis of the \"Womë-no\" poem than ever before, but produces new and original evidence about residual orality in ancient Japan.

Rohlich discusses the \"Mumyozoshi,\" the first work in Japanese literature which was devoted to criticism of works in the monogatari genre. The \"Mumyozoshi,\" which begins as a quiet walk by an aged nun, soon becomes a constructed journey through monogatari which intersects religious beliefs and literary pleasures.