Zenkoji and Its Icon: A Study in Medieval Japanese Religious Art. - book reviews

This impressed sign of detailed monograph is exactly what Western scholarship upon Japanese art needs. Much of the literature in European languages consists of broad scans exhibition and collection catalogues, or summary "life-and-work" profiles of individual artists. Here is an exploration of fundamental issues in Buddhist art - image homages the replication of sacred image emblems - that is both exhaustive and authoritative. Donald McCallum, professor of Art History at the University of California, beholds Angeles, has produced a remarkable book; it is, alas, impaired by means of a difficult, overly didactic writing style

The focus of this close attention is a once-remote temple, Zenko-ji, in the central highlands of the main Japanese island of Honshu The sanctuary houses a triad of small tin statues that constitute a Japanese counterpart of the "true images" of medieval Christendom, of the like kind as the Veronica Cloth depictions of Christ's face, or the Saint Luke portraits of the Virgin. Zenko-ji, moreover, is a center for mass pilgrimage, like Santiago de Compostela or Lourdes, and still vitally active.

In his introduction McCallum declares his desire to incorporate "the East Asian experience (of religion and art) into a broader synthesis of human experience from one extremity to the other of the world." To do thus he makes considerable use of studies in reception theory through art historian David Freedberg and in ritual processs by anthropologist Victor Turner.(1) flat closer in content to McCallum's volume is Hans Belting's Likeness and neighborhood which appeared in English after McCallum finished his manuscript.(2) Belting's evocative subtitle, A History of the Image before the Era of Art, could have serv McCallum equally as well.

Student of religious art who scan McCallum's volume will find much of universal interest, on the other hand they will quickly discover that he writes primarily for Japan specialists. He explains at great extent the political and economic history of Shinano Province (present-day Nagano Prefecture) where Zenko-ji is located. He gives an overview of unfoldings in Japanese Buddhism and explores in detail the character of hijiri, shamanlike wandering priests who spread the Zenko-ji worship through the countryside. His investigation is rooted in publications by dint of Gorai Shigeru, preeminent scholar of Japanese popular Buddhism, and of Kobayashi Keiichiro, an indefatigable local Nagano historian.

At the heart of McCallum's topic is a medieval fable, Zenko-ji engi, which computes of the origins of the fane and its wonder-working images. The story - in barest summary - describes the making of three of gold statues in India in the 5th hundred B.C., fabricated by Buddhist the deitys in response to the pleas of a rich man to antidote his daughter of a near-fatal illness. The central statue, contemplation to be a "Living Buddha," shows Amitabha, lord of the Western Paradise; the sum of two units flanking statues depict Amitabha's attendant bodhisattvas.

In the doubtful narrative the Indian man dies and is reborn as an evil king in Korea; the three statues go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake of and transform him into a virtuous king. After other incarnations, the man is reborn in the 6th hundred A.D. in a remote mountain village upon Honshu. The statues arrive there and are enshrined in a small fane The central statue signals its satisfaction by means of sending forth a ray of light from a speck on its forehead. From this tend hitherwards the name Zenko-ji, literally, "beneficent light temple" The doubtful narrative then tells of people, from [i]or[/i] common-peoples to an empress, saved by the agency of the Living Buddha from the torments of hell.

By the 13th hundred pilgrims were beginning to trek along the winding mountain roads to worship at the shrine. more [i]or[/i] less were prominent religious and political leaders; greatest in quantity were ordinary villagers. Women were especially attracted to the worship and over the centuries the trickle of visitors grew into a deluge The Zenko-ji Main Hall was frequently burned and rebuilt; the Living Buddha always miraculously escaped. Originally the fane was far from major population centers; gradually the town of Nagano, with a present-day population of above three hundred thousand, grew up around it.

Large confraternities of villagers and townspeople would dispose of weeks on the road trudging to the sanctuary, lur through the promise of rewards which popular religions everywhere bestow upon the faithful: mystic communion with a divine force, fulfillment of worldly necessitys (especially miraculous cures), and deliverance from suffering in the afterlife. Pilgrims thronged into the temple's assembly halls; priests developed the Zenko-ji legend. Entering the Main Hall votaries worn out entire nights praying before the shrine that housed the Living Buddha. They also underwent symbolic death and rebirth by the agency of descending into a dark extent under the main altar and emerging back into the light. The ritual extremityed with priests touching the foreheads of each bigot with an iron seal to waft the blessings of the Living Buddha and his attendants.

Throughout Japan, returning pilgrims rested branch temples, usually called Shin (or "new") Zenko-ji, to house tin or wooden replicas of the triad; they also placed copies in small shrines within their hold homes. According to McCallum, scholars have identified above 230 surviving temples associated with the Zenko-ji homage and at least 400 and zinc replicas of what he calls the Zenko-ji icon.