Kannon Bosatsu

Shunko has not been identified, but judging from the quality of this painting, he must have been an artist of some reputation. The sweetness and sensuality of this image of Kannon is quite different, almost uncomfortably so, from earlier Japanese images of this bosatsu. In the early twentieth century an important theme in Japanese culture was the shared heritage of Asian cultures, expressed in the motto of Okakura Tenshin (Okakura Kakuzo), “Asia is one.” Tenshin had visited India in 1901 and had established a strong relationship with the Indian philosopher and critic Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1942). Within this context artists such as Arai Kanpo (1875–1945) and Asai Kanpa (1897–1985) traveled to India to study Indian art and visited the famous caves of Ajanta, where they made careful copies of the paintings there and heard lectures on Indian mythology. Tenshin encouraged two generations of artists to follow this pilgrimage route, resulting in a popular taste for Indian imagery in painting and sculpture in Japan. The softly swaying body in the “thrice bent” pose, the long arms hanging from the shoulders like the trunk of an elephant, and the gentle downward gaze of the eyes are typical of Buddhist imagery from Ajanta. This is combined with the Taisho era tendency to emphasize the fantastic in the creation of dreamy, visionary images. The dedication of the artist to the Buddhist faith is suggested by his dating of the image to the 2504th year after the birth of the Buddha.