Onmyo-ryo

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  • Japanese: 陰陽寮 (onmyou ryou)

The Onmyô-ryô, or Yin-Yang Bureau, was an organ of the ritsuyô state which oversaw matters of spiritual and geomantic significance, including divinations and calendrics.

Many of the officials of the Onmyô-ryô were ritual specialists from the Korean peninsula.[1] Those particularly expert in divination, geomancy, and other yin-yang related "magical" fields were known as onmyôji; Abe no Seimei (d. 1005) was the most famous of these, but members of the Nakatomi clan also held significant positions in the Onmyô-ryô, coming to dominate the office for a time.

References

  1. Evelyn Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia: Cross-Border Perspectives, Cambridge University Press (2015), 117.