A reading log · published fortnightly
A reading log for East Asian Buddhist art.
Iconography, primary texts, transmission history, and the materials and technique of Japanese Buddhist image-making — Kannon, Fudō, Kei-school sculpture, raigō-zu, Jizō, Daruma. Every piece names its sources; every image carries its collection, accession, and rights line. No hagiography, no mystification.
Six ways in
The image world, organized by what a reader is looking for.
- Compassion The seven canonical forms of Kannon — Avalokiteśvara across a thousand years of Japanese image-making.
- Wrath Fudō Myō-ō and the Five Wisdom Kings of Mikkyō. Compassion in its fierce mode.
- Sculpture The Kei-school revolution — Unkei, Kaikei, gyokugan crystal eyes, yosegi-zukuri joined-block construction.
- Pure Land Raigō-zu — the descent of Amida and twenty-five bodhisattvas across a gold-leaf horizon.
- Transmission Asuka and Hakuhō foundations, Tang-China sources, Korean transmission. How an iconography travelled and changed.
- Zen Daruma and the ink line — chinsō portraits, Hakuin's brush, Bodhidharma across a thousand years of monastic image-making.
Selected
