With the cataclysm of death, what happens to those remaining fragments of a life, which appear disposable to others but become the mourner’s heart-breaking distillations of both loss and trace? In the rich epistolary culture of medieval Japan, letters – reused, recycled, and reframed – figured prominently in Buddhist memorial rituals. With the death of a loved one, family members gathered the dead’s letters and transcribed sacred scripture on their surface, transforming the original missive into a letter sutra (shōsokukyō). Adorning these scrolls with gold, silver, and indigo dyes, women were the first to make memorial palimpsests. Indeed, they invented a wider cultural practice in which mourners tempered grief by transforming the everyday traces of loved ones into potent objects. This talk explores the creative methods deployed by women in coping with death and loss, the ephemerality and afterlives of letters, paper’s fragmentation via reuse and recycling, and the haptic engagement with layered manuscripts.
Halle O’Neal is a Reader in Japanese art history and Co-Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her book, Word Embodied with Harvard University Asia Center in 2018, explored the intersections of word and image and relics and reliquaries, as well as the performativity of Buddhist texts. Her edited collection, Reuse and Recycling in Japanese Visual and Material Cultures (Ars Orientalis 2023), examined the reuse and recycling of diverse objects across Japanese history. Her forthcoming monograph, Dead Letters: Reuse, Recycling, and Emotions in Japanese Buddhist Manuscripts with Harvard in 2026, analyses the intimate repurposing of handwritten letters for Buddhist death rituals. She has been awarded grants from the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She sits on the Board of Trustees for the Association for Art History and is Co-Editor of Buddhist Studies Review.
Organised by Dr Lan Pu and Dr Sujatha Meegama, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Senior Lecturer in Buddhist Art History, The Courtauld, in collaboration with the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Art and Culture.
