234
Moving Mirrors
The remaining imagery, however, has obvious Buddhist significance,
which brings
Watchman
back to the rhetorical territory of the earliest
Mir-
rors
. Following his ten-point attack on Zen, Arifusa reminds the reader
that the partnership between the buddhas and the
kami
is what safeguards
Japan, with Ise Shrine as the central site of this cooperation.
110
Ise’s inner
and outer precincts are mapped to the Womb and the Diamond Realms
of Esoteric Buddhism, and a mirror is located in the stream that flows
through the grounds of the shrine.
111
This mirror, the reader is told, “is
the Great Mirror of Perfect Cognition.”
112
Subsequently, Arifusa reminds
the reader that Tendai and Shingon are best suited to “manifesting Bud-
dhist virtue and ensconcing the authority of the gods.”
113
In this way, al-
though the mirror here is not invoked for its specific power to reflect the
past (or even the present), its ability to reveal an ultimate understanding
of reality is nonetheless reaffirmed. Moreover, as Sasaki points out, this
rhetoric replicates the divine country discourse espoused by the court
(which included the idea of divine descent).
114
In this respect, too,
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