Nyoirin Kannon

14th century; hanging scroll: ink, color, gold pigment, and cut gold foil on silk; 101.7 x 41.6 cm. Important Cultural Property

Similar in size and date to the Senju Kannon, this beguiling image of Nyoirin Kannon, the Bodhisattva with a Wish-Granting Jewel, presents a distinct view of the development of Japanese-style painting in the Kyoto-Nara region. Above and below the golden roundels encompassing the pensive Nyoirin a vivid landscape enfolds. At the bottom, the ocean meets the waters of a thunderous waterfall amid boldly leaning rock ledges and cantilevered boulders. Their contours are rendered in firm modulating ink lines or, sometimes, in washes of kinde. A series of brown washes was then applied, over which layers of thick green mineral pigments were selectively added to create an attractively textured but rugged landscape.

Gold lines also enhance the wave patterns and the fissured plateau on which Nyoirin's lotus base rests. It is the large flowering cherry tree directly under the meditating deity, however, that eventually catches one's attention in the lower part of the composition. The tree must be old to have reached this size, a wonder considering its location. Four other trees also show signs of venerable age and the effects of coastal weather. Patches of lichen outlined in dots of white pigment confirm their endurance and the ambient moisture of the air. Minute trails of white cherry petals fall from the tree, identifying even more closely the season. In a related visual gesture by the artist, the uppermost branches of the tree on the right edge of this lower section splay over onto the deity's halo, much the way that Nyoirin's scarf end trails down into the landscape setting. The natural, increasingly Japanese-appearing world and the conceptual setting of Buddhist imagery in medieval painting are depicted in close contact with one another.

The ease, almost nonchalance, of these slight visual motifs bespeaks a new era of cohesion and compatibility between Buddhist communities (and their patrons) and their lay followers. In a new age in which the public looked increasingly toward developing their own institutions and the methods of strengthening their faith in more practical and familiar ways, artisans responded by advancing new approaches to subject matter and technique.

Thus in the landscape above the halo the artist dispensed with the detailed categorizing of nature in favor of creating a pattern of sweeping arcs of green, brown, and gold. To the sides, tall cedars out of scale with the mountainscape or to Western notions of perspective rise upward, reaching almost to the top of the painting. Bold swaths of ink frame their structure, while thin gold lines highlight the arch of their clinging roots. Gold applied from behind the silk delineates a large and ominous opening in the mountain face. It also casts a gentle glow across the upper section of the painting and illuminates the shapes of the soaring trees. An unidentified species of tree is in bloom to the upper left beneath a section of damage where the outlines of another pair of tall cedars are just visible.

Thus the upper and lower portions of the composition create contrasting visions of the same natural prospecta mountain rising into the air from the waters belowbut in doing so provide an emboldened tableau and backdrop for Nyoirin. The painting's fine condition gives the viewer a rare opportunity to gain an idea of the extraordinary level of craftsmanship involved in the production of painted religious icons in the Kamakura period on such a fragile material as silk.

The halo and figure have been painted from behind with kinde. Kirikane was liberally applied to robe patterns and most notably to the reddish-pink pigment of the lotus petal surfaces. Few extant Buddhist paintings of the fourteenth century have the technical sophistication and excellent state of preservation visible here.

Nyoirin's gold body is outlined with an evenly modulated red line. Each of the six arms possesses the attribute ascribed to it in the seventh-century text Kanjizai Nyoirin Bosatsu Yugaho-kyo, although the gesture of the leaning head probably derives from the deity's portrayal in the Taizokai mandala (Womb World), where it appears in the Kannon court to the proper right of Dainichi.

This gesture, no doubt central to understanding the deity's general appeal in Japan since the ninth century, actually signifies a meditative state more evident, perhaps, in the imposing sculpture in the exhibition. The three blue wish-granting jewels refer to the powers of mercy; the rinbo signifies the Wheel of the Law, Nyoirin's teaching role aspect; and the hand placed flat on the golden brown rock ledge that impinges onto the lotus pedestal represents a gesture confirming his residence on Mt. Potalaka, the mythical island paradise where Kannon resided. But as this lush animated landscape enfolds, it becomes ever more apparent that the urgency and appeal of contemporary religious and secular issues in fourteenth-century Japan spilled over into visions such as this, putting new but more familiar imagery, forms, colorand ways of seeing the Japanese worldbefore the populace. As one might suspect, this imagery gradually became so familiar that actual mountain locations in Japan became associated with the idyllic Mt. Potalaka. Thus native geography accrued spiritual dimensionsespecially where venerable Shinto antecedents could be identified.

The preceding entry, written by the Cleveland Museum of Art's Curator of Japanese and Korean Art Michael R. Cunningham and edited for use on this web site, is excerpted from the 268-page color-illustrated catalogue, Buddhist Treasures from Nara, available in hard or softcover at the museum stores.