Fabricating the “Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara” and Prince Shōtoku’s Afterlives by Chari Pradel (review)

Reconstructing the history of an ancient object is no easy task, and the challenges are compounded when that object has been reduced to a few damaged remnants that were physically reworked and conceptually repurposed over several centuries. However, that is precisely what Chari Pradel has done in her meticulous study of the Tenjukoku shūchō mandara, an assemblage of embroidered textile fragments that have been housed—in one form or another, in whole or in part—at Chūgūji, Shōsōin, Hōryūji, Nara National Museum, and Tokyo National Museum. Pradel argues that the original artifact, known as the Shūchō, was first created in the seventh century as a set of curtains with primarily non-Buddhist funerary imagery for use in memorial rites for Prince Shōtoku. This artifact was then repaired and given a thoroughly Buddhist identity in the thirteenth century when it was discovered at Chūgūji temple by the nun Shinnyo and employed to legitimize the popular Shōtoku cult of her time; in this guise, the artifact became known as the Tenjukoku mandara. Pradel’s biographical approach effectively pieces together extant evidence to recount the artifact’s visual motifs and function in different periods of Japanese history up to its present incarnation as an art object.

Chapter 1, “Material and Visual Evidence,” focuses on the technical aspects of ancient textile production and reconstructs the iconographical program of the Tenjukoku shūchō mandara to situate it within East Asian visual culture. The explanation of the threads, stitches, and different fabric weaves in the work is supplemented by an informative and beautifully illustrated appendix that further details the types of stitches and weaves used, including magnified views that greatly assist readers unfamiliar with textiles. In suggesting a seventh-century production date for the Shūchō, Pradel draws on comparative examples from the Shōsōin to help provide a larger context of textile production; she also notes, however, that the paucity of extant evidence makes refining the date problematic. Similar limitations are mentioned in other places in the book, serving as valuable reminders that working with ancient objects does not always produce clear and definitive answers; we can only make suggestions based on extant evidence.

The chapter also cites precedents for the captivating visual motifs discernible on the textile. The remnants constituting the Tenjukoku shūchō mandara were pieced together somewhat haphazardly on a handscroll mounting sometime in the eighteenth century, making them quite difficult to decipher. Pradel remedies this through the inclusion of highly informative line drawings by her team of skilled artists (Summer Furzer, Christian Gutierrez, Cheryl Laner, Ken Pradel, and others), which are vital to understanding the original motifs on the severely damaged artifact. While some of the drawings are adapted from previous scholarship, they benefit greatly from a fresh interpretation. Standing male and female forms, lotus flowers, celestial bodies, auspicious animals such as turtles, and flying figures are compared with similar motifs found in Chinese and Korean tombs, leading Pradel to the conclusion that the original seventh-century motifs on the Shūchō included a celestial realm, omens, and an idealized landscape all based upon continental imagery dealing with divination and ideas of rulership that appeared in primarily funerary contexts.

In addition to the visual motifs, the seventh-century Shūchō carried an inscription that was embroidered, four graphs (characters) at a time, onto the backs of the small turtle images. While only one of these turtles and five other disembodied graphs remain, the inscription was transcribed in Jōgū Shōtoku hōō teisetsu (Imperial Biography of the Saintly Virtue Dharma King of the Upper Palace) sometime between the eighth and eleventh centuries. This inscription, which comprises a genealogy and a narrative of the Shūchō’s manufacture, is the focus of chapter 2, “The Embroidered Inscription and the ‘Imperial Biography.’ ” The chapter opens by laying out the significance of writing in...