Introduction: Living Buddhist Statues

Abstract

The importance of Buddhist statues in Japan can hardly be overstated. In fact, until the Edo period (1603–1867), almost all statues in Japan were Buddhist. This does not mean that they were all images of a being identified as a buddha, but rather that they depicted figures related to Buddhism. In Japan, as in China, the legend of the introduction of Buddhism revolves around statues. When the Japanese were introduced to the Buddhist images imported from Korea and China in the sixth century, without any doctrinal understanding of Buddhism, they were impressed by what they took to be powerful foreign deities. Modern scholarship has tended to attribute the spread of Buddhism across Asia to the teachings of missionaries, but material culture has arguably played a greater role. As one scholar explains, “[I]t is important to think not so much of a disembodied dharma [doctrine] descending on another culture from above, but rather of a more material movement—of monks, texts, relics, and icons—along trade routes and across deserts, mountains, and seas.”1 In the case of Japan, in particular, that material movement came largely in the form of statues.