Page 135 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

yo Fudo Myôô with two attendants
Unkei (d. 1223)
polychromed wood
h. Fudô Myôô, 136.8 (537/8); Kongara
Dôji, 77.9 (305/8); Seitaka Dôji, 81.8
(3^A)
Kamakura period, 1186
Ganjôjuin, Shizuoka Prefecture
Important Cultural Property

Unkei, the foremost Japanese sculptor of
Buddhist images during the early Kama-
kura period, had a wide and long-lived in-
fluence. Along with his father, Kókei, and
his father's other leading disciple, Kaikei
(fl. c. 1185-1223), Unkei led the Buddhist
sculptors of Nara in the work of recon-
structing the ancient Nara temples, which
were burned in the course of civil war in
1180. The work included the restoration of
the great Buddha of Tôdaiji and the many
Buddhist images that surrounded him.
When this task was completed in 1203, the
court granted Unkei the title hdin (Seal of
the Law), the highest rank accorded to art-
ists.
In 1186, before beginning work at
Nara, Unkei made the three Buddhist im-
ages shown here for the Ganjôjuin; the pa-
tron who commissioned them as an act of
piety was Hôjô Tokimasa (1138-1215), a war-
rior cheftain of Izu Province in the north-
east and father-in-law and ally of the newly
made shogun, Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-
1199).
Traditional Buddhist iconography
gives Fudô eight youthful attendants, of
whom the pair seen here are the two most
commonly shown: the mild and devout
Kongara and the more brutish and violent
Seitaka. NYS

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