My Blog

Dōmoto Inshō

2009-11-05T19:17:00.002-08:00

Other Japanese artists inspired by Buddhism chose to represent their faith
through abstract rather than representational imagery. Foremost among these is
Dōmoto Inshō, who in his youth showed paintings in the same 1920s Teiten exhibitions
where Sawada Seikō exhibited his sculptures. While Seikō maintained
the same course throughout his career, Inshō embarked on a radically different
artistic trajectory in the post–World War II period. After he traveled to Europe
for study in 1952, one of the few artists to do so soon after the war, he abruptly
reinvented himself as an abstract artist, abandoning representation of figural
imagery as characterized by paintings such as Yuima (see plate 24). Although he
was the first Nihonga painter to embrace abstraction completely, some Interwar
artists had incorporated elements of it and others had formed radical art associations
designed to inject a new spirit of modernity into their art (Rimer 1995a,
65–66). By the time Inshō instigated this change he had become a much-loved
artist, and this turnaround garnered him a mixed public reception domestically,
though it attracted the interest of foreigners through shows of his work in Europe
and New York. Inshō wrote that he initiated this new direction because “without
breaking free from everything in the past, there can be no true creativity. The
denial of tradition based on pure awareness is itself genuine tradition. Only from
years of experience and faith can this be done. Thus I ventured forth into creativism.”
37 Among his sources, he credits the Russian-born abstract painter Wassily
Kandinsky (1866–1944), who was himself interested in Buddhist philosophy.

Mori Mariko

2009-11-05T19:17:00.001-08:00

Mori Mariko joins traditional Buddhist iconography and futuristic visions in
mesmerizing multimedia photo and video installations that transport viewers
into her visualizations of enlightenment, mystic Buddha worlds that fuse the
spiritual and material realms. Her art forces viewers to question their notions
of reality as it envelops them in all-encompassing environments, complete with
interactive elements and sounds that encourage tranquil and meditative frames
of minds, similar in spirit, but perhaps more intense, to the immersive atmosphere
that Taniguchi attempted to create in his Hōryūji Treasure Hall at the
Tokyo National Museum (see fig. 9.9).
Mori first left Japan at age twenty to study in London and then New York,
after a brief stint as a fashion model in her teen years. She now divides her time
between New York and Tokyo. She left Japan, she says, in search of individuality
and freedom of expression.35 Only after long residence abroad did she seek
to reconnect with her roots. This led to her formal study of Buddhism in 1996
and her observation that although Japanese people may not formally follow the
faith’s tenets, its respect for all life and its overriding concern for maintenance
of harmony with nature make up an integral part of the Japanese worldview,
different from the Western presumption that humankind dominates nature.36
Through her art she endeavors to show the relevance of such values beyond cultural and national borders and that “in the next millennium, the power and
energy of the human spirit should unify the world” (Mori 1998, 11).
Mori is a modern-day pop artist in the spirit of the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp
(1887–1968), whose “readymades” included his infamous Fountain of 1917,
an inverted urinal that commentators of his day likened to the image of a seated
Buddha (Baas 2005, 83). Mori enjoys inserting herself, in the guise of deities or
shamans, into her surreal scenes, much like anime fans who “cosplay” (“costume
play,” dressing up in the costume of favorite anime characters). Typical of her extravagant
installations is Nirvana (1996–1998), titled after the Buddhist state of
enlightenment. It includes an acrylic lotus-shape sculpture, a three-dimensional
video (that viewers watch after donning special glasses), and four huge glass
photographs of dramatic vistas of famous locations throughout the world that
symbolize four forces of nature — earth, air, fire, and water. One of these, Pure
Land (plate 37), shows an unearthly vision of the Dead Sea with Mori, assuming
the persona of a bodhisattva, hovering over a cartoon-like fantasy version of the
Pure Land Buddhist paradise. Such inventive, whimsical, pop art interpretations
of central Buddhist concerns have found enthusiastic responses from Western
audiences, more so than from Japanese.

Kondō Kōmei

2009-11-05T19:16:00.002-08:00

A contemporary of Maeda, Kondō Kōmei also specializes in representing Buddha
worlds in his art, particularly that of the Buddhist paradise into which believers
are reborn after death. He does this from the perspective of an ordained
Tendai-sect priest using the visual language of Nihonga. He first began painting
as a child, studying traditional Buddhist painting from his father, head priest
of a Tokyo Tendai-sect temple. During World War II he enrolled in the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts, but he interrupted his studies when called into military service
in 1944. During glider training in the mountains near Karuizawa in Nagano
Prefecture, Kondō experienced an epiphany — after seeing small plants high atop a mountain peak, he yearned to be free like them. He recalled later that the
beauty he discerned on this occasion became the inspiration for his paintings.
During his military training he fell ill and was treated at a military hospital before
returning to civilian life. After the war, as eldest son he followed his father’s
profession and briefly entered the Tendai priesthood, where he recovered his
health, studied Tendai philosophy, and had his eyes opened to the symbolism
in the mysterious world of Buddhist painting. But he soon left the clergy and
returned to Tokyo to complete his degree in painting at the Tokyo School of
Fine Arts. He has worked as a professional painter ever since. Although he has
never studied abroad, his paintings have been shown worldwide since the 1960s
in various international exhibition venues of modern Japanese art.
Throughout his career, Kondō has focused on portraying the magnificent
beauty of the Buddhist paradise in landscape scenes occasionally complemented
by the ethereal form of the bodhisattva Kannon. He sees his art as a continuum
of the work of Buddhist painters of the past, whose pictures gave concrete form
to the unfathomable splendor of Buddhist truths.34 Representative of his paintings
is Illusionary Light, completed in 1987, a visualization of the Western Paradise
of the Buddha Amida, with a yellow orb of the sun setting amidst a deeply
red cloud-filled sky where golden butterflies flutter gracefully around a bejeweled
wisteria vine

Maeda Jōsaku (b. 1926)

2009-11-05T19:16:00.001-08:00

Maeda Jōsaku is one of a number of Japanese artists who take as his starting
point not Buddhism’s saints or deities, but rather its sacred sites and transcendent
realms, especially mandalas (cosmic diagrams of the Buddhist universe),
first conceived in the esoteric Buddhist sects. Because of a tradition of secrecy
and oral transmission of esoteric rituals, contemporary scholars cannot be
sure exactly how these mandalas were used or interpreted long ago when they
were devised. But it is clear that their purpose was to aid believers’ quests for
enlightenment.
Maeda works in a Japanese painting tradition known as Yōga (Western-style
painting), using oil or acrylic paints on a framed, stretched-canvas format, and
creates lithographs and silk-screen prints. Like Hirayama, Maeda has achieved renown
for his art both within Japan and worldwide, and he, too, is a well-respected
academic, president of the prestigious Musashino Art University in Tokyo, his
alma mater.29 Also like Hirayama, he occasionally paints works for temples of
various sects and is warmly regarded by the orthodox Buddhist establishment,
who appreciate his original interpretations of iconic Buddhist images.30
Maeda first traveled to Paris in the 1950s, studying Western art for five years.
Writing about a Paris exhibition of his paintings in 1960, a French critic described
them as “mandala-like.” Only after seeing this comment did Maeda realize
that although he had not consciously invoked such imagery, he was indeed
drawn to it through his faith in Shingon Buddhism, whose ritual practices place
great importance on mandalas. This devotion obliges him to approach painting
itself as a religious act; he always meditates prior to taking brush to paper.
He has completed many series of paintings and prints featuring diagrammatic
imagery of temples along the Kannon pilgrimage circuits and of various forms
of mandalas, especially the Shingon sect’s “Mandala of the Two Worlds,” composed
of two separate components, the Diamond World and the Womb World.
His Meditation on the Silver River (Ginka meisō) (plate 35), from his Personal
Impressions of Mandalas (Kansō mandara shirizu), completed between 1980
and 1982, is one of a pair of paintings he completed that represents his free
interpretation of this Shingon mandala. Here, Maeda visualized the Diamond
World mandala, which “represents reality in the Buddha realm, the world of the
unconditioned, the real, the universal, and the absolute.”31 Maeda wrote that in
his mandala paintings he attempted to create a pictorial vision of the centripetal
and centrifugal forces of the coming and going of the limitless universe and the
motion of all things within it.32 His early mandala paintings, like this one, borrowed
literally from orthodox mandala imagery, although they did so with great
imagination, as here, turning the flat, gridlike composition of the original into a
futuristic three-dimensional rendering. In later paintings of mandalas, “he came
to portray a mystical realm he had experienced in his own mind.

Yamanaka Manabu (b. 1959)

2009-11-05T19:15:00.001-08:00

Yamanaka Manabu is a photographer who also invokes images of Buddhist deities
in his striking photographs of real people.27 He grew up in a working-class
neighborhood in the Osaka suburb of Amagasaki, where community life revolved
around local Buddhist festivals.28 However, he did not feel deeply about
Buddhism until after he had moved to Tokyo at the age of twenty-three. There,
he worked first as a commercial photographer but soon decided to try creating
an artistic series of photographs of life-size portraits of homeless people (fig.
10.6). He titled the series Arakan (Rakan) because the homeless men whom he
photographed seemed to embody the spirit of Rakan, the Buddha’s devout followers
who lived as ascetics in impoverished circumstances within but separate
from the world around them. Yamanaka conceived of this series after encountering
numerous homeless people who seemed somehow pure because of their
estrangement from ordinary life, qualities that the Buddhist Rakan had possessed.
After six years of research and production, he first exhibited this series
in 1989.

Viewers’ immediate recognition of these figures as possessing the qualities
of both vagrants and saints is not unlike the effect Mori Sosen’s naturalistic
rendering of Shussan Shaka (see plate 14) must have had on his audience. To
accomplish these photos, Yamanaka had to first gain the trust of his wary, often
mentally ill subjects. He did this by living in small capsule hotels near homeless
communities. In all, he photographed about six hundred men, mainly in
Osaka and Tokyo. From this large number, he selected a Buddhist canonical
number — sixteen — for inclusion in his series.
His studies of Buddhism for this series led to his deeper engagement with the
universal values of the faith that he continues to convey in his art. One subsequent
series, Fujōkan (Decomposing animals) featured dead animals he found
on a beach, inspired by the traditional Buddhist concept of kusō, the subject
of Kikuchi Yōsai’s painting, The Inevitable Change (see plate 15). In Fujōkan
Yamanaka emphasized the Buddhist concept of death as a natural extension of
life, a concept that crystallized at a young age, when he witnessed the death of
his grandmother in the home she shared with his family and also after a traffic
accident killed his favorite pet dog. Other series feature people whom he believes
personify Buddhist deities or saintly personages. One, Gyahtei, focused
on extremely elderly nude women valiantly posing for his camera. In another,
Doshi (Buddhist acolytes, young children who accompany and assist deities), he
sought to show that living children possess this saintly spirit. But because of the
extreme materialism of Japanese society, Yamanaka felt that he could find such
children to photograph only in remote Southeast Asian villages, where Buddhism
in a purer form continues to flourish.
In all his series, Yamanaka explains that his goal is to find and reveal a kind of
inner beauty in his subjects, one that exceeds the superficial notion of “pretty.”
However, due to the disturbing and confrontational nature of his images, his
work is not so popular in Japan. Nevertheless, he continues to reside in Tokyo,
but shows his work primarily through a New York gallery.

Visualizing Faith, 1945 – 2005

2009-11-05T19:14:00.001-08:00

sinCe the end of World War II, Japanese Buddhist followers have become
divided into two, not always mutually exclusive, groups of enthusiasts: monks
and lay practitioners associated with its traditional institutions, and individuals
inspired by Buddhist philosophy as propagated by secular scholars. Because of
the multiple ways people have come to relate to Buddhism, visual expression
takes many forms. Temples continue to generate a need for recognizable representations
of the faith’s deities, often in response to new devotional practices.
Specialists in Buddhist image making, workshops of anonymous artisans, and
amateur devotees all create such images. Other visual materials, generally more
suggestive or allegorical and the product of professional secular artists, stem
from the makers’ and the public’s interest in nondenominational Buddhism and
the humanitarian values that the faith espouses. Scholars and art critics generally
regard only these latter materials as art and consider the former emblematic
of Buddhism’s commodifi cation. This chapter focuses on select artists and types
of imagery, both traditional and avant-garde, that exemplify the profusion of
visual expression inspired by Buddhism.

Buddhist Sites of Worship, 1945 – 2005

2009-11-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

world war ii dramatically changed the architectural landscape of Japan.
Previously, wooden structures predominated. Afterwards, increasingly stringent
fi re-prevention codes, better access to foreign building materials, and new
technologies encouraged the construction of buildings — including Buddhist
worship halls traditionally made of timber — of reinforced concrete and other
modern building materials. Japanese architects embraced modernist styles of
architecture — buildings erected using modern materials, stripped of extraneous
ornamentation, and designed for ease of use — as much for technical virtuosity
as for aesthetics and practicality.1 These structures also contributed to projecting
a desired aura of modernity in the appearance of Japan’s built environment.
Earlier in the twentieth century, some temples had utilized these materials,
but the practice remained sporadic. Only after the war, with the expansion of
urban fi re-prevention districts in the early 1950s to encompass most temple compounds,
did reinforced concrete construction become widespread at temples.2
Yet because Japanese building codes allow offi cials to defer to local preferences,
temples can still obtain permission to construct wood-framed structures. Nevertheless,
most recent temple buildings are composed of modern materials, sometimes
mimicking older timber-framed buildings and sometimes creating wholly
new types of religious spaces, light-fi lled and comfortable, in accordance with
principles of modern design. In premodern Japan, although each Buddhist sect
required slightly diff erent building types, certain consistent stylistic elements
identifi ed all their buildings as Buddhist. Not so for recent Buddhist monuments.
These diverse structures refl ect the varied nature of Buddhist practice in Japan
today as well as the competing expressions of modern architectural styles.

Buddhist Institutions after an Era of Persecution, 1868 – 1945

2009-11-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

the leaders of the Meiji Restoration dealt a heavy blow to institutional Buddhism
by tying reassertion of imperial power to the emperor’s divine status
as heir to the Shinto deities who created Japan, making Shinto the country’s
national religion. Weeks after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and continuing to
1872, the government enacted separation of Shinto and Buddhism (shinbutsu
bunri) edicts, which included provisions that forced temples to close or become
Shinto shrines, scattered lay follower networks, stripped temples of their role
as census keepers, and mandated retirement of thousands of Buddhist monks
and nuns, many of whom became Shinto priests.1 This derision of Buddhism
had actually developed gradually during the Edo period, but near the end of the
era opposition to the faith swelled among both the daimyo who led opposition
to the Tokugawa and many citizens in reaction to perceived materialism of its
institutions and critiques of the faith by staunch supporters of Shinto, who argued
“that Buddhism was an alien and distorted creed, inimical to the interests
of Shinto, the domain, and the country” (Collcutt 1986, 148).
Although the Meiji government maintained that it did not intend to destroy
Buddhism but simply to extricate it from close association with Shinto, many
local authorities took the new regulations as a mandate to demolish Buddhist
temples (eighteen thousand by some estimates) under the slogan “destroy the
buddhas, abandon Shaka” (haibutsu kishaku). The incomplete census data from
the early Meiji period suggests that persecution of Buddhist institutions and
their clerics continued as late as 1876. Among these lost temples, many belonged to the Rinzai sect, which was closely associated with the old Tokugawa regime.
Others, mainly affiliated with Tendai, Shingon, and Sōtō Zen, had few, if any, parishioners,
did not regularly perform funerary rites, lacked head priests, or functioned
primarily as sites of prayers for personal benefits (Collcutt 1986, 161–163).
Although these efforts may have closed temples, they did not diminish religious
devotion. As noted by Emile Guimet (discussed in chap. 8), an astute foreign
visitor to Japan in 1876, “popular religion was one of the first things the progressive
innovators had hoped to destroy; but their efforts in fact resulted in a revival
of popular beliefs and forced the clergy to reorganize and perfect themselves.”2
This chapter addresses just this issue — the ways Buddhist institutions sought
to resurrect the faith in the aftermath of persecution, with particular reference
to the central role its temple buildings and sculpted icons played in this transformation.
The remarkable resurgence of Buddhism in the Meiji period marks
a profound turning point in the way the religion and its monuments have functioned
in Japanese society ever since.

Buddhist Imagery and Sacred Sites in Modern Japan, 1868 – 2005

2009-11-05T19:08:00.000-08:00

Ever since Westerners first freely roamed Japan during the Meiji period, they
have enjoyed visiting Buddhist temples and their gardens. Many came simply to
see the exotic land of Japan firsthand or to serve as missionaries, but some became
so entranced by Buddhism that they converted to the faith.1 Many also collected
Buddhist art for museums and private collections abroad, at first because
these objects could help foreigners visualize the faith, but gradually their interest
shifted to an appreciation for the aesthetic appeal of the objects. Invariably, they
visited the most famous, ancient temples in Kyoto and Nara and of course the
Great Buddha of Kamakura, as well as some sites and monuments no longer extant
and now forgotten.
To many visitors, interest in Buddhist sites and images stemmed from their
attraction to Japan as a quaint, exotic land. They lamented the push towards
Westernization and modernization that, since the Meiji period, has been propelling
Japanese society into the forefront of the global economy. But where does
Buddhism fit into this scheme? And has it been able to survive as a living tradition
with relevance to modern times? Statistics on the number of practicing Buddhists
in contemporary Japan vary considerably from 20 percent to 90 percent,
depending on the questions about the nature of people’s religious practices and
faith. Contemporary Japan is widely regarded as a secular nation, with Buddhist
institutions playing a marginal role, largely peripheral to people’s lives. But is this
really so? 2
I believe the striking and diverse examples of sacred imagery and sites of worship
I have found, as well as the many powerfully moving images made as demonstrations
of faith by private individuals, both by professional artists and amateur
practitioners, belie detractors’ claims of Buddhism’s irrelevance to modern
Japan. Although these new Buddhist monuments and icons sometimes scarcely
resemble what came before, and although they may be displayed in nontraditional
spaces where they serve new functions, often as objects of aesthetic contemplation,
their inspiration derives from Buddhist values that have remained
consistent with those of the past. They reveal the ever-changing evolution of the
faith in tandem with transformations in Japanese society for which they serve as
both reflections and shapers of Buddhist thought and praxis.

Tokugawa Bakufu Regulations for Buddhist Institutions

2009-11-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

The different stimuli for establishing Buddhist institutions during the eighth and
sixteenth centuries exemplify the profoundly dissimilar outlooks towards sovereignty
by Japan’s ancient imperial and early modern warrior rulers. Emerging
from the same milieu as his immediate forerunners, Tokugawa Ieyasu shared
Nobunaga and Hideyoshi’s views of Buddhism. However, Ieyasu took further
steps than his predecessors to harness the power of Buddhist institutions to help
implement his political agenda. To accomplish this, he and his immediate successors
brought Buddhist institutions under Tokugawa domination in a series of farreaching
judicial policies. His high regard for Buddhism is evident in his consideration
of the advisers he chose to help him draft these laws: two trusted Buddhist
monks, the Zen abbot Ishin Sūden (1569–1632) of Nanzenji and Nankōbō Tenkai
(1536–1643), a Tendai priest from the Tendai sect’s headquarters at Enryakuji at
Mount Hiei (Hieizan).3 Sūden advised the shogunate on religious, diplomatic, and
political matters, earning a reputation as a ruthless authoritarian.
Tenkai first met Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1589, long before the latter became shogun.
By 1613, Tenaki had become so important to Ieyasu that the shogun appointed
him the head priest of Kitain, the Tendai sect’s Tokugawa family mortuary
temple in the castle town of Kawagoe near Edo, the Tokugawa seat of power.
They initially intended this temple to rival and serve as eastern Japan’s equivalent
of the powerful Tendai sect headquarters at Mount Hiei, north of Kyoto.
Later, the third shogun decided it was too far from Edo and erected another
temple, Kan’eiji, instead (see below). Tenkai also became head abbot of the small
Tendai temple of Rinnōji at Mount Nikkō, in the mountains northeast of Edo,
where he presided over that temple’s subsequent restoration and rise in prestige
as part of a newly planned Buddhist-Shinto mausoleum complex dedicated at
first to the deified spirit of Tokugawa Ieyasu (the Nikkō Tōshōgū) and, later, to
other Tokugawa shoguns (discussed further below).
The edicts that the bakufu drafted with the aid of these influential advisers
were first aimed at specific, troublesome temples and sects, then expanded to include
temples of all denominations. Among the many regulations, some forbade
the creation of new temples, controlled construction at existing institutions by
regulating the physical appearance of temple structures, regulated the conduct
of monks, and stipulated that all temples adhere to a strictly regulated, hierarchical
temple organization scheme known as the “main temple-branch temple”
system (honzan matsuji) (Lu 1974, 214–215; and Nosco 1996, 145). One of the most far-reaching regulations required all citizens to register with a local temple
as part of a household temple registration system (terauke shūmon). The bakufu
abhorred the proselytizing efforts of Western Christian missionaries, whom they
considered threats to their hegemony. Requiring citizens to belong to local Buddhist
temples assured the government that the populace had not abandoned
Buddhism in favor of Christianity. This edict also created a way of taking a national
census and enforcing payment of taxes (Nosco 1996, 146). It also resulted
in vast increases to the number of temples throughout Japan during the Edo
period and the repair of structures at existing sites, many of which, at first, the
bakufu oversaw directly and funded with its unprecedented wealth, much of it
obtained from confiscated landholdings of the Toyotomi family.4
The bakufu also used these edicts to limit the power of the imperial family.
Among laws that determined promotions within clerical rank, one curtailed
imperial power over Buddhist institutions by restricting emperors from granting
the “purple robe,” or highest rank, to Buddhist clerics, a duty previously
understood as belonging in the domain of the imperial court. This promulgation
caused such wrath in Emperor Gomizunoo that he abdicated in protest.5
Although the government had issued most of its laws governing temples during
the seventeenth century, the bakufu continued to disseminate new ones
throughout the Edo period. Among the last was a mid-nineteenth-century edict
that confiscated temple landholdings, forbade Buddhist ceremonies at the imperial
court, and curtailed the hereditary appointment of high priests’ offices
(McMullin 1984, 248, and 399, n. 55).