Artwork Page for Budai

Details / Information for Budai

Budai

布袋

late 1400s
inscription by

Jonan Etetsu

(Japanese, 1444–1507)
Culture
Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
Medium
hanging scroll; ink on paper
Measurements
Painting: 51 x 24.8 cm (20 1/16 x 9 3/4 in.); Mounted with knobs: 132.1 x 41.7 cm (52 x 16 7/16 in.)
Credit Line
Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1988.17
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print

Description

The Zen monk Jonan Etetsu is recorded as the 183rd abbot of Tō fuku-ji temple in the eastern hills of Kyoto, one of the earliest and most influential Zen institutions in medieval Japan. Otherwise, the only biographical information known to date has been gleaned from a few inscriptions on paintings documenting his friendship with another eminent monk, Ryō ’an Keigo (1425–1514), and two paintings bearing Jonan’s own poetic inscriptions. This image of Hotei (Chinese: Budai), a legendary, 10th-century Chan (Zen) monk, is one of those paintings. In Japan the image of the mirthful, pot-bellied Hotei enjoyed great popularity from the 14th century onward. Zen literature and popular folklore merged to create a storehouse of attractive fiction concerning this delightful character’s worldly adventures as a kind of itinerant Santa Claus and more symbolically as the future Buddha, Miroku, in disguise. For the Japanese, Hotei came to represent an unfettered path to spiritual enlightenment. The identity of the artist of this painting is unknown, although it may have been Etetsu, who attained a high rank within the 15th-century Zen community.
A hanging scroll depicts Hotei, a fat man with a light skin tone facing slightly left with a bald head and upward-curved lips. He wears loose ink-brushed robes and holds a staff and prayer beads in his right hand, with a large sack slung behind him. Above the figure, vertical columns of Japanese calligraphy fill the top third. The scene is framed by a patterned brown and blue textile border.

Budai

late 1400s

Jonan Etetsu

(Japanese, 1444–1507)
Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)

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