In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter Eight From Icon to Art, 1868–1945 around the time the new Meiji leaders developed appreciation for ancient Buddhist imagery and created national museums to preserve them, these arts began to be purchased by private collectors, both Japanese and foreign. Simultaneously , artists associated with newly formed art schools turned away from representation of Buddhist themes popular in the late Edo period and drew inspiration from these newly discovered treasures, as well as from new philosophical ideas about art and religion.¹ Sometimes, they expressed their personal faith in their art, creating these works for their own contemplation, but often they showed them at public art exhibitions, both the newly conceived forum of juried exhibitions and at international expositions in Europe and the United States. This chapter addresses these critical developments, revealing how the conversion of Buddhist imagery from icon into object of aesthetic contemplation contributed to separating the faith from its institutional roots and led to Buddhism becoming an integral component of modern Japan’s secular culture. Early Collectors of Japanese Buddhist Art For various reasons, institutions and private individuals, both Japanese and foreign , started collecting Buddhist imagery during the 1870s. Their quest was aided by opportunities created when temples sold their treasures due to financial straits and when temple transformations into Shinto shrines necessitated disposal of orthodox Buddhist imagery considered inappropriate for display in Shinto’s sacred halls. One of the earliest Japanese nationals to display Buddhist icons in a secular space was Makimura Masanao (1834–1896), the vice minister 200 | buddhist imagery and sacred sites in modern japan of Kyoto from 1871, who placed a once-secret image in his prefectural office. While his motivation for doing so remains unclear, it seems unrelated to belief in Buddhism. As part of his zealous campaign for modernization, which included promotion of meat consumption and wearing Western dress,he instigated the closure of many Kyoto temples and the destruction of numerous stone Buddhist images, which he ordered used as building materials.² Imagery removed from Buddhist temples also included icons representing quasi-Buddhist subsidiary divinities associated with popular syncretic devotional practices.³ This sanitization of Buddhism resulted in a loss of understanding of the significance of these heterodox icons. Modern scholarly taxonomy largely echoes this split between Buddhism and Shinto, dictating the study of each tradition’s art separately. One iconographically unorthodox image is a striking, well-carved, life-sized statue of a demonic oni shown in the guise of a begging monk (fig. 8.1), like an ōtsue painting come to life. A Scandinavian collector , probably interested more in its powerful presence than its status within the Buddhist pantheon, purchased it in the late nineteenth century. Because this statue so closely resembles the pose of Ōtsue oni nenbutsu pictures (see fig. 4.19), it likely dates to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, when that imagery first became popular, and came from a temple in the Ōtsu region in the vicinity of their manufacture.⁴ However, because of the multiple meanings attached to this deity, its exact function in a Buddhist hall remains unclear. The Meiji government also began collecting ancient Buddhist art as part of its effort to preserve monuments embodying the nation’s cultural heritage. In 1871 it established a national museum, which opened in 1872 within the halls of the old Tokugawa clan’s family Confucian shrine in Tokyo, the Yushima Seidō. Materials for display were gathered by a team headed by the museum’s first director, Machida Hisanari (1838–1897), that surveyed and occasionally appropriated the holdings of temples and shrines.⁵ Machida’s team did not consider the objects examined art but rather historic treasures, prefiguring the shift in the perception of Buddhist imagery from icon to art. Machida, however, was himself a devout Buddhist (Guth 1993, 106). In accordance with this new attitude, the government in 1877 sponsored the first public exhibition of Buddhist imagery. More than 1,000 objects from Nara temples were shown in the cloisters surrounding the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It also led to the “gifting” of 319 objects from Japan’s most ancient temple of Hōryūji to the Imperial Household Collection in 1878 in exchange for funds to restore the temple. In 1882 these Hōryūji treasures were transferred to the national museum when it relocated to a new building within Ueno Park in Tokyo, its present site (Guth 1993, 109). Government agencies continued to carry out periodic surveys of temples and shrine...

Share