Haruko Wakabayashi, in The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, examines the images of the tengu goblins in medieval Japan and in their specific representation in the tengu zōshi 天狗草子, a set of seven narrative scrolls (e-maki) depicting tengu from the late thirteenth century. In particular, Wakabayashi emphasizes that contrary to the largely humorous image of tengu in the modern period, these goblins were commonly represented as manifestations of evil (ma 魔) in medieval Japan, in which evil was typically identified as the obstruction of the path to Buddhist enlightenment. Moreover, the tengu were commonly used by Kenmitsu temple complex monks as part of the rhetorics of legitimacy in medieval Japan, although she clarifies that with the influence of didactic tales such as those in Konjaku monogatari shū 今昔物語集 such appropriation was multifarious in character.

Wakabayashi, focusing on the late Heian and Kamakura periods, emphasizes that evil was associated with belief in the Final Age of the Buddha Dharma (mappō). The image of the tengu as evil was in fact deployed variously to explain social problems, condemn specific groups or individuals, and to support religious claims, but Wakabayashi focuses on the association with evil because of its predominance in medieval literary representations of tengu, the lack of any major study focusing specifically on the connection to Buddhist ideas, and because it opens a window for understanding better the concept of evil and its appropriations in medieval Japan.

The first part of the book, “Tengu and Buddhist Concepts of Evil” (pp. 3–51), explores how the figures were deployed as part of Buddhist discourses. Wakabayashi argues that, based on native traditions, the tengu was initially seen primarily as a kind of malicious spirit that either took possession of individuals or caused social disruption (e.g., onryō 怨霊 vengeful spirits), was often identified with the evil one Māra (attempted disturber of concentration in Buddhist stories), and initially noteworthy in legends of birth in the Pure Land (ōjōden). However, with the increasing prominence of esoteric Buddhist (mikkyō) practice in the aristocratic class, the tengu became associated particularly with obstructions to the Buddhist path, invariably depicted as causing some form of suffering, the solution to which was represented as mikkyō ritual or one form or another.

Wakabayashi offers an important discussion of the development of the discourse of a “ma course” (madō 魔道) of rebirth that some scholar-monks invoked from the late Heian period onward. Although I will suggest below that she may have overstressed the extent of belief in madō in the populace, her analysis of materials by figures like Myōe (1173–1232), Jōkei (1155–1212) and Mujū (1226–1312) depicting madō reveals that, within their groups, there was a belief in the “realm of Māra” (madō) as a site for a marginal area of rebirth for those capable of practice but not of putting forth the awakening mind (hosshin 発心; Skt. bodhicitta) – distinct from the six courses. Wakabayashi demonstrates that, among these, Jōkei directly tied rebirth in the ma course with the Final Age and that the tale compiler Mujū later emphasized the difficulty of putting forth the awakening mind during mappō along with its connection to birth in the ma realm.

Wakabayashi turns, following that discussion, to the tengu depicted in Hirasan kojin reitaku 比良山古人霊託, which were typically closely related to ancestors of a leading noble family, the Kujō. Similar to the madō representations, the oracle in the work describes how those reborn on the “tengu course” (tengudō 天狗道) had been persons who had too much attachment; for example, not only the sovereign Sutoku and the retired sovereign Go-Shirakawa, but also elite monks such as Jien and Ryōgen, who were Kenmitsu temple complex figures who served as royal-protector monks (gojisō) for the sovereigns, were reborn in the tengu course. Thus, for the author Keisei (1189–1268), himself a tonsei recluse-monk of Kujō background, rebirth as tengu was not associated with following into hell; rather, there was an implicit hierarchy even in the tengu course – those who argued for the “exclusive nenbutsu” were represented as especially prone to birth in hells. In this way, by means of recognizing Keisei's view of the tengu course, we can understand the position from which Keisei viewed Pure Land faith in connection with Kamakura New Buddhism and elite monks, and also glimpse the various movements of Buddhist lineages and their relationship with the dissemination of Buddhism in the transitional era of the Late Kamakura period.

In the second part of the book, “Reading the Tengu zōshi” (pp. 55–160), Wakabayashi examines the variety of representations of the tengu in the seven extant versions of Tengu zōshi and attempts to clarify their textual lineage. Among the seven extant scrolls, she notes five depict arrogant and attached monks of the Kenmitsu temple complexes as being reborn on the tengu course. However, insofar as birth as tengu is limited to Buddhist believers it is apparent that the tengu, unlike beings such as hungry ghosts, animals, and hell-beings, retained the possibility of birth in the Pure Land. Wakabayashi divides her analysis between the five versions representing the major temples of Nara and Kyoto – especially drawing attention to their similarity to engi emaki works that provided detailed legends about major temples – and two Edo-period versions associated with Miidera (Onjōji), which are more closely connected with didactic tales (setsuwa) on tengu of the medieval era. Particularly noteworthy is Wakabayashi's suggestion that Miidera A reveals a point of view toward tengu that ties them specifically with anti-Buddhist evil (ma) – associating them especially with Jishū and other new practitioners of Kamakura-period Buddhism like hōkasō – that is at variance with all of the other texts, which depict rebirth as tengu as based on self-attachment rather than anti-Buddhist behavior; and that Miidera B was initially written by the original author of the five versions (pp. 82–83). Thus, the Tengu zōshi presented tengu in a mélange of muted critiques of prominent monks of the established temples and a virulent critique – at least, in the case of Miidera A – of peripatetic practitioners of newer religious movements (pp. 121–22).

Wakabayashi, based on her study of the seven scrolls and of related other works like the extensive alternative version, Shichi tengu'e, held in Kanazawa Bunko archives, comes to conclusions about the identity of the original author of the work. Similar in her view to Harada Masatoshi, Wakabayashi comes to the conclusion that the author of Tengu zōshi was a monk of Onjōji, and was likely either Keisei himself or Kenben (1268–1330), a disciple of Ryūben and scion of the Kanesawa Hōjō clan.

An important strength of this fascinating study is that it does its best to give voice to the manifold sources it treats while it considers important comparative contributions of the problem of evil. Indeed, Wakabayashi's argument (pp. 123–40) for focusing on the Onjōji section of the depiction for special consideration is forceful and convincing, particularly given Onjōji's comparatively close connection to the royal family and the representation of its protection of major warrior families. At one point, however, Wakabayashi oversteps the materials. In describing the gradual end of the production of Pure Land birth-narratives (ōjōden) in the Kamakura period, she surmises not only that the new stress on nenbutsu-only and the related belief in the inability of beings to use meritorious practice helped contribute to the development but that: “People thought they were more vulnerable to ma, and it is this insecurity that led to the creation of madō” (p. 35). It strains credulity to claim that scholars can ascertain what (a) “people” thought in general, that (b) ma was seen as its cause, and that this belief (feeling) (c) “led to” the creation of a discourse depicting a new realm of rebirth. No author enjoys being taken to task for a particular sentence, but the claim is at the heart of her discussion of madō and offers extratextual surety that is unwarranted. Meanwhile, Wakabayashi's argument (pp. 153–59) concerning the use of hongaku (original enlightenment) discourse in Miidera B is convincing, but the reader comes away wondering if the discussion does not make Miidera B seem as much of an outlier textually as Miidera A. The mode and focus of the argument, rather than its conclusions, seem unique to Miidera B among all of these scrolls.

I would also note one problem concerning translation. Wakabayashi routinely uses the term “rebirth” in both the context of the Pure Land and of the six courses (rokudō). However, the Buddhist technical terminology is typically distinct – ōjō into Amida's Pure Land is a “birth” into an area that is outside of the realm of karma and rebirth, beyond the realm of Desire (i.e., the realm of the six courses); hence, Buddhist texts often describe ōjō as the culmination following realization of non-retrogression (ketsujō ōjō 決定往生) that transcends regular karmic and assures eventual enlightenment. “Rebirth,” ideally, should be reserved for terminology concerning rebirth within samsāra (commonly called tenshō 転生 or rinne tenshō 輪廻転生), in order to avoid confusion with the ōjō terminology and related Pure Land ideas. Wakabayashi's use of rebirth as a translation for ōjō is in contradistinction to her subtle and well-crafted analysis of the liminal position of madō and tengudō within the Buddhist cosmos.

These are all simply minor criticisms of an important contribution to the study of medieval Japanese Buddhism and premodern Japanese art history. Haruko Wakabayashi has drawn together the many valuable studies of tengu and woven them into a convincing narrative that for the first time offers a book-length study of the Buddhist character, social meaning, and history of the Tengu scrolls – and one, moreover, that is informed by careful study of recent theories of evil in religion. The study, as a result, is a rare work that skillfully bridges the best of Japanese scholarship with the interdisciplinary and theoretical insights of scholars worldwide.