The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 23, 2025

Sacred Name of Tenjin

1500s

Sakugen Shūryō

(Japanese, 1501–1579)
Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
hanging scroll; ink on paper
Overall: 105.4 x 18.4 cm (41 1/2 x 7 1/4 in.)
Gift from the Collection of George Gund III 2015.508
Location: Not on view

Description

The story emerged in the early 1300s that the kami Tenjin had traveled to China and achieved enlightenment under a famous Buddhist meditation master. Paintings of the subject as well as written invocations of Tenjin’s name were highly valued by the monks of Japan’s Zen Buddhist communities, to which an invocation of Tenjin’s name brushed by Zen monk Sakugen Shūryō attests. Sakugen was both a poet and an official envoy to Ming China in the 1500s. Creating calligraphies of deities’ names was akin to painting religious icons.
  • ?–2015
    George Gund III [1937–2013], bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    2015–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Vilbar, Sinéad, and Kevin Gray Carr. Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 110-113, no. 45
  • Shinto: Discovering the Divine in Japanese Art 神道－日本美術における神性の発見. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 9-June 30, 2019).
  • {{cite web|title=Sacred Name of Tenjin|url=false|author=Sakugen Shūryō|year=1500s|access-date=23 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2015.508