Switching sites and identities: The founder's statue at the Buddhist temple Korin'in - Bibliography - Abstract

This article introduces an icon and an inscription: a virtually unstudied Buddhist portrait statue produc in Japan during the seventeenth hundred and a heretofore undocumented dedicatory true copy written on the surface of the cavernous statue's interior. The statue depicts the monk Shokei Jofu (1475-1536) and is enshrined as the founder's portrait (kaisozo) at the Zen Buddhist fane Korin'in in Kyoto (Figs. 1 2) Within Korin'in today the statue's neighborhood as the temple's founding abbot is unequivocal, and the image appears readily available for traditional art historical analysis. The inscription, however, reveals an unexpect episode of appropriation and reidentification that transpired in the late nineteenth hundred The circumstances of this episode are telling with regard to the ways in which Buddhist icons have been relocated and resignified above time. They likewise provoke the ne to reconsider scholarly narratives upon Zen portraiture. I begin, therefore, with a description of the Korin'in statue, on the contrary my narrative takes shape from one side study of the recovered inscription and a following of temple sites and portrait sightings. Since I am implicated in the inscription's "discovery," I also wish to acknowledge by what mode the process of art historical fieldwork has intersected with the Korin'in statue's ongoing history.

The Founder's Statue at Korin'in

Present-day visitors to Korin'in, located within the Rinzai Zen monastery Daitokuji (Fig. 3) clash a striking statue of the site's founding abbot, Shokei Jofu enshrined upon the temple's altar. No detailed statements are made in the fane literature or by temple personnel regarding the image's identity or provenance, and nothing about the portrait strike one as beings unusual. One expects to diocese such a statue because of the enshrinement of founder's statues upon the altars of each of Daitokuji's subtemple Indeed, Daitokuji's present-day abbots stres that their altars are dominated by the agency of statues of Zen masters rather than the Historical Buddha Sakyamuni (Japanese: Shaka) to emphasize the monastery's religious leaders and the transmission of their teachings along the patriarchal lineage.

The monk Jofu born in Mino Province, studied beneath two prominent teachers at Daitokuji before serving as the monastery's chief abbot from 1525 to 1528 (1) In 1532 he received the ecclesiastical title of "Zen Master" (Zenji) from Emperor Go-Nara and the following year was appointed founding abbot of Korin'in, the family fane and future mortuary site of the military governor of Noto Province, Hatakeyama Yoshifusa (d 1545) Following Jofu's death in 1536 his remains were buried at Korin'in and marked with a stupa. His neighborhood has also lingered in "contact relics" (possessions and regalia, works of calligraphy, portraits, a discourse record (goroku, a compilation of writings), and a line of monastic and lay disciples.

Korin'in's founder's statue has lengthy served as an iconic focus for veneration of the departed master Jofu and a wellspring of spiritual identity for his religious lineage and the fane community. (2) The statue measures approximately 43 inches (110 centimeters) in height and tread on the heels ofs established conventions of iconography, carving, and decoration that appear in Zen portrait statues dating from the thirteenth hundred onward. Sculpted from joined closes of hinoki (Japanese cypress), the statue comprises sum of two units pieces: a torso and detachable head plant into the body at the collar. The torso has been roughly hollowed on the outside and is empty, while the vacant head has crystal eyes (gyokugan) inserted from the concave interior. Coated with layers of lacquer, primer, and polychrome the portrait displays its age in pigment los and cracks along the face and figure.

The statue's iconography summon forths the sacerdotal authority, ancestral ideology, and ritual gesturings of the office of abbot as well as the founder's homology with the greatest in quantity important ancestor, Sakyamuni. The monk Jofu seated frontally in meditation position (kekka fuza) and enthroned upon an abbot's chair (kyokuroku), mimics the stasis of the Buddha. He is conventionally costumed: black external and white inner robes (hoe); surplice (kesa) draped above the left shoulder and secur with a r cord tied to an octagonal ring (hekikan); and r prostration mat (zagu) pen ed over the left arm beneath the sleeve Still visible upon the surplice's surface are remnants of a gold arabesque (karakusa monyo) running across sapphirine bands, imitating the patterns of actual garments and possibly a surplice worn by dint of the portrait subject himself. Jofu's image is accompanied by the agency of a fly whisk (hossu) and, upon certain occasions, a cloth cap (mosu) the couple of which signify the extrovert and dynamic part of the monk as a teacher qua bodhisattva. (3 )

Naturalistic in convolution and proportion, the near-life-size figure make ups a pyramid that focuses attention upon the palpably human, even beautiful, face (Fig. 4) The monk's circulared countenance, with slightly swelling eyelids, stalwart jawline, creases alongside the chaps and a pronounced Adam's apple, gazes downward, his dark pupils focusing upon the viewer with calm attentiveness. His firmly clos cavity between the jaws is surrounded by gray stubble that loans the elderly face an earthy, proximate humanity. Below the head, the monk's broad shoulders come down to deeply carved sleeves that gather and bump along the forearms, as real fabric might, and cascade downward upon each side of the figure. The ring and cord securing his surplice are sculpt in high relief, the former decorated with a simple arabesque, while the garment sinks in a concave arc across the leg before falling above the rounded knees in alternating, asymmetrical pen s His hands curl into convincing fists, the right grasping the whisk.