Page 218 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

movement known as the Vinaya of the True Dharma (Shóboritsu), which advocated a return to the
pure Buddhism of an idealized past, what Jiun called "Buddhism as it was when the Buddha was alive."
He was at once a fundamentalist who stressed the importance of monastic discipline, a scholar who
mastered Sanskrit and compiled a thousand-fascicle Guide to Sanskrit Studies (Bongaku shinryô), and
a popular preacher whose sermons to the laity emphasized the value of Buddhist social ethics to the
family, business, and the state.
Jiun was most prolific during his final twenty-eight years, while he was in retirement at the
small temple of Kókiji in Kawachi. Known primarily as a calligrapher, he created work that is immedi-
ately recognizable for its expressionistic manner of conflating the variety of religious traditions he
studied. In these two works (cats. 128,129) Jiun shows his preference for bold large-scale characters; 217

their strength is emphasized by contrast with the rest of the poem written to the left in each example.
Both calligraphies display the "flying white" effect achieved by using a heavily but partially inked
stiff-bristled brush. In the Poem titled "Perseverance" in particular one can discern the influence of San-
skrit, Jiun's primary scholarly focus, in its muscular centripetal tension.
A fourth Buddhist figure during this period, also a religious professional, has left a huge and
extraordinary corpus of works distributed in temples and shrines across the country. Enkü (1632-1695),
an itinerant priest of theTendai-affiliated school of mountain asceticism known as Shugendó, is
said to have vowed to carve 120,000 Buddhist images as a form of religious practice. To date scholars
have identified more than seven thousand examples of his work. Without the benefit of traditional
artistic training, his tools limited to the hatchet and chisel, Enkü created powerful examples of reli-
gious statuary characterized by a purposefully unfinished, organic, and expressionistic appearance. 15
While Enkü's work has been sometimes likened to folk art, it shows none of the conservative reitera-
16
tion usually associated with the folk tradition. His subjects include fewer orthodox Buddhist deities
and more of those associated with folk religion, such as mother-and-child deities worshipped in the
hope of easy childbirth and healthy children. Enkü's work also shows Buddhist/Shinto interaction.
Unrelated to the mainstream of Japanese Buddhist statuary of the Edo period, or even that of the Muro-
machi, Kamakura, or Heian (794-1185) periods, Enkü's work finds its precedent within the orthodox
vocabulary of Japanese Buddhist sculpture from the ninth and tenth centuries, before the development
17
of the joined-wood (yosegi-zukuri) technique replaced carving from a single log. The finlike projections
at either side of the garments depicted in Two Kongôshin figures (cat. 130) are strongly reminiscent of
bronze sculpture from the Asuka-Hakuhó period (mid-sixth century to 710), suggesting familiarity with
this early tradition.

Although stylistic similarities may seem to exist between Enkü's carving and the sometimes
wild and playful brushwork of Hakuin and Sengai or the dynamic calligraphy of Jiun, a disparity
remains between the traditions that inform their works. Unlike the monastic painters, whose seem-
ingly unstudied style was the result of a great deal of learning, Enkü appears to have been far less
connected to the institutional centers of the religious and cultural elite. He remained a Shugendó prac-
titioner throughout his life, traveling from his home province in central Japan to regions as distant
as the northern island of Hokkaido to undertake religious austerities in sacred mountains. Enkü's work
may thus be better viewed within the tradition of the simple hatchet-carved (nata-bori) statues or
chiseled-rock images (sekibutsu) created throughout Japan by anonymous Shugendó practitioners. 18
Because Shugendó was a tradition that combined elements of Esoteric Buddhism, Daoism, shamanism,