Page 370 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

ures on both sides and rendered in larger scale,
but no indication of shrine setting. Five devotees
are at the left, and a yamaloushi (not seen in the
earlier painting) is at the right. What appears to
be a name, lettered in gold, is seen near the figure
of the old woman in the group at the left. This is
the only suggestion that the painting may have
had a specific context or intention.
Of the two paintings compared above, the later
one is the more formalized. Radiating light cast
by the ascending deity is rendered as schematic
bands outlining the mountain ridges. This hand-
ling is quite distinct from the earlier painting,
where shading and modeling were employed in an
attempt at naturalistic landscape. The Shonen-ji
painting is also the more symmetrical of the two,
with the pilgrims affecting the poses of supplicant
benefactors or donors at the feet of a central icon.
The painting is a distinguished example of boldly
rendered Buddhist iconography of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. Pattern and color have
here overwhelmed the subtlety of an earlier style.
Cut gold leaf (kirikane) embellishes the robe, but
figural representation is less adroit. The Heian
and Kamakura (1185-1333) union of palette with
modulated brushwork to define form or shape has
given way to shape defined primarily by pattern
and color. The brush is far less apparent. This
painting reflected a new, populist Buddhist faith
whose iconographic needs were best expressed
forcefully. J.u.
S.E.L.

212
Tosa Mitsunobu function in a gyakushu, or reverse ritual, in which determining which of the Six Realms of Existence
active 1469-1521 liturgies appropriate for a deceased person were (Rokudo) one will inhabit in the next life. Right
performed on behalf of a yet living supplicant actions impel transmigration to higher realms and
KINGS SHINKO AND EMMA, as a means to gain merit and avert suffering in eventually to Enlightenment, which brings release
FROM THE SERIES TEN KlNGS OF HELL the afterlife. from the cycle of karma. Hell is the lowest of the
Inscriptions on the reverse of the paintings and Six Realms. Its depiction in these paintings de-
dated to 1489 a diary entry by courtier Sanjonishi Sanetaka rives from a fourth-century Daoist concept of a
Japanese (1455-1537) describe the probable circumstances netherworld ruled by a lord with ten attendants,
hanging scrolls; ink, color, and gold on silk and a Song dynasty distillation of that notion into
l
5
each 97 x 42.1 (^8 /4 x i6 /s) of the commission. Sanetaka, a Mitsunobu inti-
mate and subject of a well-known portrait-sketch a tribunal of ten judges (with assistants) modeled
Jofuku-ji, Kyoto (housed at Kyoto National by the artist, notes that Mitsunobu made copies of on the Chinese judiciary.
Museum) a set of Kings of Hell paintings attributed to Tosa Such paintings served a precise function in
Yukimitsu (i4th century) and held in the collec- Buddhist funerary practice. Following the death
Images of the courts of Shinko-0 and Emma-O tion of the Nison-in, a temple in Kyoto. It is of a believer, a memorial service was held every
are two of a series of ten paintings of the Buddhist assumed that the copying was related to the seventh day for forty-nine days, then on the one
Kings of Hell and their courts commissioned by emperor's commission. hundredth day and on the first and third anniver-
Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado (r. 1465-1500). The The Yukimitsu scrolls are also extant, and their sary. Each of the Ten Kings (or Judges) presided
series was to be produced at the rate of one paint- approximate date of execution suggests they are over one of the ten days in this memorial se-
ing per month, beginning in the eighth month not far removed from a Song Chinese (960-1279) quence. Appearing in the paintings of each of the
of the third year of the Chokyo era (1489) and iconographic type which arrived in Japan in the Ten Judges is a corresponding Buddhist deity, sig-
continuing through the fifth month of the second late twelfth century. In Buddhist cosmology the nifying both the protective role and the causal
year of the Entoku era (1490). These icons were to actions of all sentient beings are consequential, primacy of the Buddhist pantheon.

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