Stephan Kigensan Licha

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About

Stephan Kigensan Licha (born 1979) studied Comparative Religions, Japanese Religions and Buddhology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His doctoral thesis, The Imperfectible Body – Esoteric Transmissions in Medieval Sōtō Zen Buddhism (London, 2012) explored the formation of the late medieval Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition. He has been a Research Student at the University of Tokyo and Komazawa University, and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for East Asian Philosophy, Waseda University and the Institute for Indian Philosophy and Buddhist Studies, University of Tokyo. Since 2017 he is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Japanese Studies, University of Heidelberg.
Stephan Licha’s current research investigates the construction of “Zen” as a doctrinal category in early medieval Japan, focusing on Enni’s (1202 – 1280) Rinzai Shōichi lineage and its interaction with Tendai oral transmission materials.He has recently finished the monograph, Esoteric Zen: Zen and the Tantric Teachings in Premodern Japan, and is leading the DFG funded research project, The Construction of Japanese Buddhist Identities in the Encounter with Sri Lanka, 1871-1893.

Employment

• 2017–2023 Postdoctoral Fellow (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter)
  Department of Japanese Studies, University of Heidelberg
• 2014–2016 Postdoctoral Fellow  
  Tōkyō University
• 2012–2014 Postdoctoral Fellow  
  Waseda University

Education

• 2012 PhD Religious Studies
• 2007 MA Japanese Religions
• 2003 BA Comparative Religions

Publications

Selected Publications

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “The Small Vehicle: The Construction of Hinayana and Japan’s Modern Buddhism”, Monumenta nipponica 76/2, 2022.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Premodern Japanese Zen”, in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 3, Jonathan A. Silk et. al., eds., Leiden, Brill, forthcoming.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Hara Tanzan, Yoshitani Kakuju, and the Academization of Buddhist Studies”, in Learning from the West Learning from the East: The Emergence of the Study of Buddhism in Japan and Europe before 1900, Hans Martin Krämer and Stephan Kigensan Licha, Leiden, Brill, under peer review.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha. “Hara Tanzan and the Japanese Buddhist Discovery of ‘Experience”. In: Journal of Religion in Japan (advance copy published online), 2020.
• Iwata Mami 岩田真美 and Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Shimaji Mokurai and Buddhist Education for Women”, in Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan, Orion Klautau and Hans Martin Krämer, eds., Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2020.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Hara Tanzan” 原坦山. (Forthcoming in Dake Mitsuya嵩満也, Yoshinaga Shinichi吉永進一 and Ōmi Toshihiro 碧海寿広, eds., Nihon bukkyō to seiyō sekai 日本仏教と西洋世界, Tōkyō, Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 2020).
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Keizan”, in Jonathan A. Silk, ed., Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Leiden, Brill, forthcoming 2019.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Separate Teaching and Separate Transmission – Kokan Shiren’s Zen Polemics”, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 45/1, 2018.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “’Keiran  jūyō shū  ni mirareru zenshū kan – Bekkyō to kikonron ni tsuite no rikai wo megutte” 『渓嵐拾葉集』に見られる禅宗観 – 別教と機根論についての理解をめぐって (Zen in the Keiran jūyō shū – On the Understanding of Separate Teaching and its Relationship to the Theory of Capacities), Tōyō no shisō to shūkyō東洋の思想と宗教, 23, 2017.
• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Dharma Transmission Rituals in Sōtō Zen Buddhism”, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 39, 2016.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Embryology in Early Modern Sōtō Zen”, in Transforming the Void – Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in Chinese and Japanese Religions, Anna Andreeva and Dominic Steavu, eds., Leiden, Brill, 2016.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Sōtōshū kirigami no keisei ni tsuite – goisetsu ni okeru ‘sen’ no hiyu  wo chūshin to shite” 曹洞宗切紙の形成について– 五位説における「銭」の比喩を中心として (On the Formation of Kirigami in the Sōtō School – Focusing on the Metaphor of Coins in Five Positions Speculation), Indotetsugaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū インド哲学仏教学研究, 22, 2015.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “The Zen of Words and Stages – Zen and Tendai Thought in the Shūmon missan”, in Tendai ∙ Shingon shoshū ronkō – Ōkubo Ryōshun Sensei kanreki kinen ronbun shū 天台•真言諸宗論攷 – 大久保良峻先生還暦記念論文集, Ōkubo Ryōshun Sensei kanreki kinen ronbun shū kankō kai 大久保良峻先生還暦記念論文集刊行会, ed., Tōkyō, Sankibō busshorin 山喜房仏書林, 2015.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “’Tendai isshū chōka daruma shō’ ni mirareru zenshū hihan” 『天台一宗超過達磨宗』に見られる禅宗批判 (Criticism of the Zen School in the Tendai isshū chōka daruma shō), Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究, 63/2, 2015.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Sōtōshū ni okeru denbō girei no keisei ni tsuite” 曹洞宗における伝法儀礼の形成について (On the Formation of Dharma Transmission Rituals in the Sōtō School), Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究, 62/1, 2013.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Edo zenki no nihon sōtōshū ni okeru shinkuretizumu no ichikōsatsu” 江戸前期の日本曹宗におけるシンクレテイズムの一考察 (A Reconsideration of Syncretism in the Early Modern Japanese Sōtō School), in “Shinbutsu shūgō” saikō 「神仏習合」, Lucia Dolce and Tadashi Mitsuhashi, eds., Tōkyō, Bensei Shuppan 勉誠出版, 2013.

• Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Words in Silence”, Komazawa daigaku zen kenkyūsho nenpō 駒澤大学禅研究所年報, 21, 2009.