Location: SOS 250
The year is 1486.
Kyoto is reeling from a civil war that has torn the city apart, and the great monastic institutions are determining how they will work together in the new political landscape. In order to celebrate a recent success with the struggling shogunal authorities, the monks of Tōji, a major temple, decide to hold a banquet to fete their allies, ordering edible gifts and fare to demonstrate gratitude. The documentary traces left by this banquet in Tōji’s archive provide a valuable glimpse of medieval temple food culture and the strength of Kyoto’s marketplace.
This talk draws on documents from the Tōji Hyakugō Monjo collection to show how we can better understand medieval food culture through unexpected source collections.
Emily Warren is a postdoctoral fellow studying the history of banquet culture in premodern Japan. She recently finished a term at the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives, where she worked with medieval temple documents to investigate the intersection of monastic life with medieval marketplaces.