Rare “Welcoming Descent” Painting

A recent accession to the Japanese art collection, currently on view until June, is a large-scale painting depicting the Buddha Amida arriving to escort a dying person to his Pure Land, or Western Paradise. Amida is attended by an entourage of 25 bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who are committed to serving others, many of whom provide orchestral accompaniment to herald the momentous occasion. To Amida’s left and right, just below his lotus pedestal, are his two principal bodhisattvas, Kannon and Seishi. The bodhisattva Kannon kneels, holding a lotus dais for the deceased to ride to their destination, while the bodhisattva Seishi stands with his hands pressed together in a gesture of prayer. 

Buddhist paintings like this one are called “paintings of welcoming descent,” or raigōzu, in Japanese. They are used in both premortem rituals, and those held as one dies. In both cases, the goal is to allow someone to focus on birth into Amida’s Pure Land instead of into one of the six realms of transmigration, or reincarnation—human, heaven, hell, animal, hungry ghost, or ashura (warlike beings). One’s time in each of the six realms is finite and related to one’s karma. However, if one is instead born after death into the Pure Land, one can listen to Amida preaching the dharma, or Buddhist doctrine, continuously, and proceed steadily along the path to enlightenment without fear of dying and being reborn elsewhere.

Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, the school of Buddhism whose practitioners commissioned this painting, was founded in Kyoto by a monk called Hōnen (1133–1212) in the 12th century. Based on inscriptions on the back of this painting, cross-referenced with the names of active Pure Land Buddhist temples on the island of Shikoku, the painting was probably produced for a family who patronized a temple on the island that was used for centuries by that community. The unusually large size of the painting suggests that it may have been used not only for rituals involving one individual but also for groups of believers. The temple no longer exists, and the painting may have left at the time of its closure. The inscriptions are valuable in that many Buddhist paintings that leave their temples can no longer be connected to their past because of a lack of documentation. Aside from its unusually large size, this raigōzu is rare for its special iconography; most paintings of its type depict Amida and his entourage moving diagonally downward across the painting, while ones like this, with the group moving directly forward, or perhaps having just arrived to greet the dying, are exceedingly rare.