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  • Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan
  • Melissa Mccormick (bio)
Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan. By Ikumi Kaminishi. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2006. x, 246 pages. $49.00.

Historians of Japanese art spend a great deal of time analyzing style and subject matter in order to recover the significance and production contexts of old paintings. In this regard, the format of a given work, its state of preservation, its architectural setting or provenance, and inscriptions can provide important leads. So too can comparison with paintings by the same artist or of similar subjects and the search for textual sources that document the environment in which these works were created. But what if the work in question was typically displayed with the accompaniment of oral commentary as it was transported over large territories and shown to diverse audiences? What if the pictorial qualities of the painting itself were conditioned by the narrative elucidations of a monk-raconteur, the precise techniques and inner mechanics of which were largely undocumented? Such is the case for numerous Buddhist narrative paintings that were experienced by their initial audiences [End Page 512] along with a form of live pictorial exegesis (etoki) that has left few traces in the historical record. Studying the practices of etoki—a term that can refer to either the exegesis itself or the person who performs it—presents a number of challenges because of its archival invisibility. A survey of etoki throughout the centuries requires a highly creative use of disparate and unorthodox resources, as well as the mobilization of methodologies from the disciplines of history, art history, religious studies, literature, and anthropology. This is precisely what Ikumi Kaminishi has set out to do in her ambitious study, Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan.

Explaining Pictures examines the phenomenon of etoki associated with different pictorial formats—handscrolls, hanging scrolls, and wall paintings—from the tenth to the nineteenth century. In covering this immense span of time, Kaminishi divides her study into four parts that move both chronologically and thematically, each further structured around the analysis of one or two paradigmatic pictorial examples. Conceptually each case study is linked through an understanding of its function as a tool of "religious propaganda." As a whole, these examples argue for the centrality of "picture explaining" in the popularization of Buddhism through the mediation of itinerant monks and nuns, and more generally for the significance of proselytization by visual means throughout Japanese history. Given the paucity of historical sources that document the oral/visual performances of etoki, especially before the seventeenth century, the devotion of six of the book's nine chapters to this early period represents a bold commitment.

Part One provides a historical introduction to etoki by examining early references to the practice from the tenth through twelfth century. Most of this section attends to a rich sequence of entries from Taiki, the diary of the courtier Fujiwara Yorinaga (1120–56), describing visits to Shitennōji and explanations of the Shōtoku Taishi eden (Pictorial biography of Prince Shōtoku) found on the wall paintings there. Because the Shitennōji paintings no longer survive, Kaminishi uses the oldest extant paintings of the same subject (installed at Hōryūji in 1069 and known to have been the focus of etoki performances by the early twelfth century) to consider in more detail what Yorinaga and the small group of elite audience members with him might have experienced. This section of the book is useful as the most detailed introduction to the history, structure, and historiography of the Hōryūji wall paintings in English.

Part Two (consisting of chapters three and four) examines the relationship between Pure Land Buddhism and etoki from the twelfth to fourteenth century. As one of the most popular schools of the "new Kamakura Buddhism," the Pure Land sect is said to have played a prominent role in the adoption of pictorial exegesis for proselytization. Two important subjects, each pictorialized on numerous occasions and represented by many surviving copies today, are chosen for analysis of a different aspect of etoki culture. The [End Page 514] first...

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