"Now, contrary to what we might expect, I argue that for Buddhists at least the planets were less wandering stars above and more deities that presided over the passage of time."

Postdoctoral Scholar Jeffrey Kotyk presents his recent work on a Japanese scroll from 1125, displaying planetary deities in both humanoid and zoomorphic form. The scroll, he argues, demonstrates "the compartmentalization of the pantheons in medieval Japan."

Publication

• Kotyk, Jeffrey. "Planets and the Weekdays in the Japanese Buddhist Imagination: Examining the Kuyō hiryaku 九曜秘暦 (Secret Calendar of the Nine Planets)." In Imagining the Heavens Across Eurasia from Antiquity to Early Modernity, edited by Rana Brentjes, Sonja Brentjes, and Stamatina Mastorakou, 235–248. Milan: Mimesis International, 2024. https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000F-B6EC-A.