The organization of childbirth in elite households of medieval Japan (1185–1336) required serious planning and decisive orchestration. Although the initial preparations for an imperial consort’s labour could take several months, what were to unfold inside the secluded birth chamber could easily escalate into both medical and ritual emergencies and necessitate a swift response from the consort’s female and male relatives, ritual specialists, physicians, and midwives. Based on recently discovered medieval Buddhist manuscripts, visual sources, diaries, and court protocols, this talk will focus on the “gendered choreographies” taking place inside and outside the birth chamber and the actions of people who inhabited such spaces during the tense moments of royal consort’s labour.

Anna Andreeva (PhD, Cantab.) is a research fellow at the University of Heidelberg. She is the author of Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard Asia Center, 2017) and a co-editor of Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions (Brill, 2016).