Kyoto National Museum
The Kyoto National Museum collects, preserves, manages, and exhibits cultural properties, while also conducting research and educational activities. It focuses on artworks dating from the Heian period to the Edo period, a time when Kyoto was the capital of Japan.
Kyoto prospered as Japan’s capital and cultural center for over a thousand years, from the relocation of the capital at the end of the eighth century to the Meiji Restoration in the late nineteenth century.
Kyoto National Museum was established in 1897 (Meiji 30) in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto, an area steeped in the city’s history and traditions. Since then, while functioning as a core institution for the preservation and transmission of Kyoto’s tangible cultural properties, the museum has also worked to disseminate the value and appeal of Japan’s traditional culture to a wide audience, both nationally and internationally.
Main works
The popular, Kamakura -period painting theme of “Amida Coming over the Mountain,” usually shows the central image of Amida(Amitābha Buddha) facing forward with both hands held over his breast. This pattern can be seen in the Zenrin-ji and Konkaikomyōji “Amida Coming over the Mountain” scrolls. In this scroll, however, Amida comes not over a mountain but across a valley, accompanied by six bodhisattva attendants. He faces not forwards but to the left, with his right hand raised and his left hand down. Though this posture is a typical of “Amida Coming over the Mountain” paintings, it is common in other “Decent of Amida Buddha” paintings (raigōzu). Since it contains no other narrative elements, such as the pious Buddhist on his deathbed awaiting Amida's salvation in the Chionin raigōzu scroll, it can be categorized as a variation on the “Amida Coming over the Mountain” theme.
The composition of this work is well-balanced and its portrayal of the figures is elaborate and reverential. It can be counted among the representative Buddhist paintings of the Kamakura period.
This scroll has no written title, but it contains forty-eighth waka poems from the twelfth volume (“Poems of Love, II” ) of the early Heian-period official poetry anthology Kokin wakashū. The poems are written on imported Chinese paper with mica-imprinted bamboo and peach blossom designs. The characters, spacing, and flowing script are remarkable. The highly individual style of the calligraphy, traditionally attributed to Ono no Michikaze, coupled with the decorative beauty of the paper has led to this scroll being called “the finest of the meibutsu-gire (famous calligraphic works).”
This work is said to have been part of the collection of Hon'ami Kōetsu, the well-known Momoyama connoisseur-designer, and it is thus known as the “Hon'ami gire.”
