Page 377 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

prosperous to commission a commemorative nobu's exceedingly sophisticated painting of the directing him to a "stream the color of running
work in this charmingly revisionist vein, or when Kings of Hell (cat. 212), dated to 1489. Along gold" in the hills east of Kyoto. There Enchin
a sect was inaugurating a period of concentrated with its comparatively garish palette and established a hermitage and conducted fervent
proselytizing. brusquely rendered cloud or mist patterns, devotions to Kannon. Chancing to meet the war-
Each scroll contains two miracle tales, each however, the Seiko-ji Engi reveals careful compo- rior Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758-811) hunt-
presented in four units of text and four painted sition, well-rendered kachuga (literally, "paint- ing in the foothills, Enchin converted him and
scenes. In the first tale Taira no Sukechika, a pros- ings within paintings") on the sliding screens, and obtained his sponsorship for the construction of
perous resident of the Rokkaku Inokuma district a vigorous style of figure painting. Mitsunobu Kiyomizu Temple at the site of his hermitage. The
of Kyoto, is visited by a monk who urges him to was certainly capable of employing a somewhat precipitous slopes offered no level site for the con-
reclaim a Jizo Bosatsu sculpture abandoned in the unpolished style if it suited the overall mood of struction until a herd of sacred deer miraculously
hills to the east of the city. Sukechika investigates, the work. j.u. appeared, causing a landslide which provided a
and finding the sculpture battered and undistin- table of land for the structure.
guished, returns to his residence without it. That In 794 Sakanoue no Tamuramaro led an expedi-
night in his dreams he sees Jizo washing his feet tion against the Ezo, a non-Japanese people living
at the well within his compound. In the morning ^7 in northeastern Japan. From the fifth century
Sukechika finds footprints on the stone beside the Tosa Mitsunobu through the Early Heian period (794-897) the
well, whereupon he fetches the statue from the active 1469-0. 1521 court powers of central Japan sponsored military
mountain and installs it in his chapel. actions that eventually subdued and assimilated
The second story in this first scroll concerns LEGENDS OF THE FOUNDING these people. As a prelude to his campaign,
an elderly woman, a fervent devotee of Jizo who OF KIYOMIZU TEMPLE Tamuramaro petitioned the protection of the bo-
makes her living selling writing brushes. When (KlYOMIZU-DERA ENGl) dhisattva Jizo and the Guardian King of the North,
a high wind destroys the roof of her home, she Bishamonten, commissioning sculpted images of
thinks her prayers ill rewarded and is angry with dated to 1517 these divinities to serve as attendants to Senju
Jizo. But the next day several young monks appear Japanese Kannon, the principal icon of Kiyomizu-dera. He
unannounced, repair her roof, and depart. That scroll two of three handscrolls; ink and color then went on to wage a successful campaign.
paper
on
night in a dream Jizo gently reproves the woman 33.8 x 1786.7 (1^/4 x jof/s) In the illustrated scrolls depicting these events
for her lack of faith. Her remaining days are spent the military campaign and the divine forces assist-
in unceasing devotion, which Jizo rewards by Tokyo National Museum ing the warriors in battle receive conspicuous
attending her passage into paradise. Important Cultural Property emphasis, with the stories of the temple's found-
Further tales of Jizo's miraculous intervention ing and the latter-day miracles of Senju Kannon
occupy the second scroll. The Kiyomizu-dera Engi describes the founding serving to frame the turbulent battle scenes.
The paintings in the scroll have long been of this temple in the eastern hills of Kyoto, the Important courtier diaries of the early sixteenth
attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu and the calligraphy military action against the Ezo people in northern century indicate completion of the scroll in 1517.
to Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455-1537), the famous Japan, and the miraculous manifestations of Thou- The hands of Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455-1537),
courtier, aesthete, patron, and calligrapher. Sane- sand-Armed Kannon (Senju Kannon), principal Nakamikado Nobutane (1442-1525), and Kanroji
taka's diary mentions work on such a scroll in deity of the temple. The three illustrated scrolls Motonaga (1457-1527), three outstanding callig-
collaboration with Mitsunobu in 1487. These are divided into thirty-three chapters or units, a raphers of the period, are seen in the scroll.
attributions have recently been contested by symbolic reference to the thirty-three manifesta- A diary entry by Nobutane makes clear that
scholars who identify the work as an early copy, tions of Kannon as described in the Lotus Sutra. Tosa Mitsunobu was the artist. It can be inferred
painted within the latter half of the fifteenth The temple traces its founding in the late from records that Mitsunobu died in or about
century. Indeed the naive, almost primitive qual- eighth century to the Nara monk Enchin (814- 1522, making this narrative scroll one of his
ity of this scroll is oddly at variance with Mitsu- 891). A sacred messenger appeared in a dream, last known works. j.u.
376 CIRCA 1492