The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan

Chapter 5. Portraits of the Deceased

5 Portraits of the Deceased Portraits as Instruments and Objects of Mortuary Rituals The common view of a portrait is that it represents a specific individual, either historical or legendary. A portrait, however, is that and more.1 The making of portraits in the West has been described as “a response to the natural human tendency to think about oneself, of oneself in relation to others, and of others in apparent relation to themselves and to others,” which suggests that the development of Western portraiture has been driven by concepts of the self and the individual.2 This statement applies mainly to the modern period of portraiture . Historically, portraiture in the West was also meant to engage its viewers in a wide range of considerations, including social status and political authority, cults of fame, and didactic purposes.3 In premodern East Asia, however , these considerations were less important. Rather, a primary function of portraits in China, Korea, and Japan was to serve as proxies of the ancestors in rites of ancestral veneration. Mortuary portraits were created specifically as stand-ins for the deceased in funerals and memorial rituals. As such, the images were viewed as living manifestations of the deceased, who shared in the essence of that person when alive. Therefore these portraits should be considered as both instruments in and objects of mortuary rituals. In medieval Japan portraits of the deceased were indeed considered ritual implements essential to Buddhist funerals and to the offering services performed on behalf of the deceased (tsuizen kuyô).4 In these two contexts they were consecrated images through which the presence of the deceased could be invoked. Although they were used as ritual objects in mortuary services, portraits differ significantly from the types of objects discussed in Chapter 4. Some of the distinctions are obvious. For example, the implements discussed in the previous 148 The Material Culture of Death chapter were made of long-lasting bronze or lacquered wood, and those very implements, or others of the same types, were used in other religious rituals performed in Buddhist temples. Mortuary portraits, on the other hand, were either hanging scrolls painted with ink and color on paper or silk, or wooden sculptures with polychromy. The most important difference, however, is that portraits of the secular deceased were never used in conventional Buddhist ceremonies. Both painted and sculpted portraits of laypersons were stored in family temples (bodaiji). Painted images would be specially brought out from storage for display on the deceased’s death anniversaries; sculpted images, being nearly life-size, usually stood permanently positioned in niches or in particular sections of the family temple. Portrait sculptures were made only for people who held important political positions and were therefore uncommon, but they functioned in the same way as painted portraits in rituals commemorating the deceased.5 Portraits of the secular elite in medieval Japan are therefore unique among the essential ritual objects used in Buddhist mortuary ceremonies, because they were intimately associated with a particular individual and family. Despite the pivotal role played by painted portraits in funerals and memorial ceremonies throughout Japan’s medieval period, today they are seldom found in temples and are even more rarely used for ceremonies honoring the dead.6 Many contemporary anthropological studies on early funerary and mortuary customs in Japan mention portraits only in passing or not at all.7 Indeed, it is generally stated that the custom of placing a picture of the deceased on the funeral altar began in the early Shôwa reign period (1926–1989).8 Even elderly Japanese to whom I have spoken seem wholly unaware that many of the famous medieval portraits now in museums once hung above funeral altars. By the early twentieth century photographs had replaced paintings, presumably for reasons of cost and convenience, but concomitant changes in the status of the likeness must also have occurred. Today, a photograph of the deceased is placed on a special altar during the wake and at the funeral, but the function of the photograph appears to be different from that of a painting or sculpture and reflects a change in the popular conception of mortuary images that should be examined. Once a painted portrait ceased to play its original role, it was lost or discarded over time, as memory and recognition by the descendants faded. Some of the surviving hanging-scroll portraits were acquired by museums, which effectively removed them from their original context and presented them as works of art. Scholars became...