This handbook explores Buddhist women’s lives and agency from ancient times to the present in Japan.

The book examines lives and representations of Buddhist women by utilizing a thematic approach, with each theme representing a network of interrelated gender roles, norms and hierarchies that determine the conditions under which women “lived” and “live” Buddhism. The contributions highlight what it meant and means to be Buddhist and a woman in the context of gendered power-structures as expressed in the realms of spatial organization, medicine and healthcare, music and sound, embodied gender and sexuality, and visual and material culture.

Exploring a topic which has previously been under-represented in scholarship, this will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of religious, Japanese and gender studies.