Page 220 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

of each region." In these mountains there were places that the common people thought were inhabited by demons,

where they were always afraid to go. But after Enkü's instruction they went to see and they were not harmed.

Enkú never asked for clothes or food. When people gave him food, he did not take things to boil; he only wanted
uncooked food to eat. Later, he came down and stayed at the villages in the forest where he saw people and pointed
out the evil that was in their hearts and minds, and warned them that they should practice good deeds. Like a divine
being, he was never incorrect. For that reason, people had a great fear of him and worshipped him. 22

An artist often paired with Enkü is a sculptor named Mokujiki Gyódó (1718-1810), whose career
is similar to that of Enkü in many ways. This artist is sometimes confused with the less well known
Mokujiki Byakudó (1750-1825), whose work is close to that of his teacher Gyódó. The name both artists 219
share, Mokujiki (literally "wood eater"), indicates their vow to eat only uncooked fruit and nuts as part
of an extreme ascetic discipline. Gyódó, like Enkü, traveled around Japan constantly; beginning at the
age of sixty he carved more than a thousand sculptures. His works are composed of gentle rounded
forms, often rhythmically layered, imparting a unique warmth and fullness to the figure. Many of his
sculptures bear a benevolent, blissful facial expressions (cat. 132). Byakudó followed his teacher's style,
but most of his sculptures are of folk deities such as Ebisu and Daikokuten (cat. 133), two of the seven
gods of good fortune.

F E S T I V A L Images of annual festivals, such as those of the Gion, Hie, Sumiyoshi, and Tsushima Shrines (cats. 134,

I M A G E S 136 -139), offer some of the most detailed representations we have of the place of religion in Edo
culture. They afford concrete views of the elaborate and explicitly popular celebrations of the day. Fes-
tivals consisted of processions in which the sacred palanquins (mileoshi) of the deities were paraded

through the streets as well as contests such as boat races and other special matches, conceived as
oracles whose answer depended on which individual or team won. Festival paintings depict not only
the ceremonial activities performed at famous shrines — the identities of participants and observers,
the particulars of architecture and topography, the inventory of ritual and material culture finely
drawn and held still against the passage of time — but the degree to which such religious activity
exceeded the boundaries of these sacred sites. It was literally woven through urban life. Some festivals,
such as that of the Hie Shrine, were associated with the ruling class; when the Tokugawa moved to
the city of Edo, an Edo branch of the original shrine on Lake Biwa (cat. 136) was established to serve
among the tutelary deities for the shogunal family (cat. 139). Other festivals, like Tsushima in Owari,
seem to have had a popular base in addition to shogunal support. The fluid nature of festival patron-
age is seen in Kyoto's Gion festival, established by the court in 869: it was overseen by the Muromachi
shogunate prior to the late fifteenth-century Onin War, but ceased with the collapse of society into
wartime chaos; it was then revived as a merchant-class spectacle during the early sixteenth century.
Festival screens adopted the elevated vantage point, panoramic vision, orthogonal architecture,
seasonal and cyclical iconography, and attention to narrative and anecdote that point to their origins
in the native storytelling traditions of Yamatoe. These gilded, colorful, intricately detailed outgrowths
of the brilliant Momoyama style from the latter half of the sixteenth century have an obvious stylistic
relationship with urban panoramas such as Amusements along the Riverside at Shijô (cat. 231). They are
most likely "blowups" of festival scenes depicted within the larger urban views known as Scenes In
and Around Kyoto (rakuchü-rakugaizu), which preceded their appearance: festival screens became an