Courtiers Visit Sugawara no Michizane’s Mortuary Temple, from Illustrated Legends of the Kitano Tenjin Shrine

Kitano Tenjin, Kyoto, is one of the most influential Shinto shrines in Japan, with connections to more than four thousand ancillary shrines in the nation. The Kitano Tenjin engi (History of the Kitano Tenjin Shrine), or Tenjin engi for short, tells the early history of the shrine in a dramatic combination of historical fact and miraculous wonders. It is typical of the religious literature popular in medieval Japan.
Compiled shortly before 1194 by a still undetermined author, the Tenjin engi is usually divided into three parts. The first is based on the life of Sugawara Michizane (845–903), a noted man of letters and one of the most brilliant statesmen of the Heian period. The story begins with the sudden appearance of Michizane as a precocious child endowed with extraordinary literary talent. His rapid rise to prominence at court and his position of favor with the emperor invited the jealousy of his rivals, particularly the leading member of the powerful Fujiwara clan, Tokihira. Michizane ultimately fell victim to Tokihira's intrigues: he was banished from the capital and sent into exile on Kyūshū, where he died in lonely sorrow. The second part of the story centers around a series of unusual events in the capital. The imperial palace was subject to an onslaught of floods and fires, and Michizane 's onetime adversaries successively met with violent deaths or suffered from bizarre ailments. Eventually, it became clear that the angry spirit of the deceased Michizane, bent on revenge, had inflicted these calamities. Nor would his wrath be tempered short of his deification as Tenjin (from the word for "heavenly deity"). Thus, a shrine was dedicated to him and honors were posthumously conferred. The first Kitano Shrine was erected in 942, and the third part of the Tenjin engi tells of its development into a prosperous Shinto establishment. Included in this section are a number of proselytizing tales of favors awarded to Tenjin's devotees.
Long before Michizane 's time the tenjin were associated with natural phenomena, and in the agricultural communities of ancient Japan many Shinto shrines were dedicated to them. The thunder god, who calls forth rain, was especially powerful and much feared. When Michizane's vengeful ghost became Tenjin, he acquired the attributes of those deities, but his metamorphosis was not complete until he regained the distinction he had enjoyed as a scholar and man of letters. As the god of learning and calligraphy, Tenjin is the most venerated Shinto deity in Japan, especially popular today with students preparing for entrance examinations. All available evidence suggests that the first illustrations for this dramatic tale were made before 1194, that is, soon after the three-part narrative was completed. The many Tenjin shrines in Japan, eager to establish connections with Michizane—either real or fictitious—created an enormous demand for illustrated copies of the scroll, and more than thirty such scrolls—ranging in date from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century—are extant. Most illustrated Tenjin engi are composed of three scrolls, one for each part of the tale. The fragment in the Burke Collection was originally part of a scroll that was the third in such a set. The scroll, which included ten episodes, was intact until 1943; it was divided up shortly after that date.[1]
In the Burke fragment, picture is followed by text because of a recent error in mounting. The reverse order is the correct emaki format, the text preparing the reader for the next episode to be illustrated. Here the illustration is of the fourth episode in part three, in which the frightened court attempts to placate Michizane's angry spirit. On August 20, 993, the imperial messenger, Sugawara Narimasa, arrived at Anrakuji, Michizane's mortuary temple, to report his posthumous promotion to Great Minister of the Left, Junior First Rank. But Michizane was not pacified and sent an angry protest in the form of a poem. The emperor, Ichijō (r. 986–1011), was profoundly disturbed but did not respond until the following year, when he bestowed on Michizane the highest possible civilian title, Prime Minister, Senior First Rank. This time Michizane was satisfied, and he acknowledged his acceptance with an appropriately happy poem. A postscript at the end of the episode promises that those who recite Michizane's poem once will be given his protection seven times a day.
In the present composition, the messenger is seated in front of Anrakuji, reading the imperial edict. He is accompanied by two courtiers. The background elements—the shore lined with pine trees and the odd-looking boat moored on the bank—are standard features of the second episode, which is separated from the Anrakuji scene by several others. The composition here was no doubt copied from an unknown model in which some sheets had been mounted incorrectly, leading to errors in matching the pictorial components with the texts of the different episodes. In other respects, the Burke painting closely resembles the same scene in a Tenjin engi scroll in the Metropolitan Museum.[2]
The Burke fragment is executed in the hakubyō (white drawing) technique, in which ink is used without color, though an occasional touch of red may be added to such details as lips. Large patches of dark ink—for example, a woman's long, trailing hair or, as here, the noblemen's voluminous garments—create abstract decorative patterns that contrast with the white paper and the areas of delicate line drawing. This type of work is usually executed with fine, regular brushstrokes rather than with the undulating line associated with the ink-monochrome technique used in Chinese-style painting. Although the fragment typifies the hakubyō genre of the late Kamakura period, this rendering appears more spontaneous than most hakubyō works (see, for example, cat. no. 109), adding a sense of drama and movement to the scene.
[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]
[1] Umezu Jirō 1970, p. 147. Four other fragments are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Honolulu Academy of Arts (Shimada Shūjirō 1969, vol. 1, p. 93), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Art lnstitute of Chicago. The two other scrolls in the set have not yet been traced. A small piece of paper bearing the title Kitano honji was pasted at the beginning of the scroll when it was still intact. The word honji refers to honji suijaku, the term used to describe the syncretization of Shintoism and Buddhism. During the Muromachi period the word was frequently incorporated into the titles of religious literature, even when the text was an established legend of a temple or shrine. Often it meant that changes had been made to existing text. The present Kitano honji scroll is an early example of the use of the word in a title; its text, however, strictly adheres to that of the traditional Tenjin engi formulated in the Kamakura period.
[2] Reproduced in Shimada Shūjirō 1981, pp. 1–16.

Matsumi Tatsuo Japanese, Japan; Kōkei Kishi Japanese, Tokyo (before 1922); Kimura Teizō Japanese, Nagoya (before 1966); [ N. V. Hammer, Inc. , New York, 1966; sold to Burke]; Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (1966–2015; donated to MMA)

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Ishikawa Prefectural Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," July 13, 1985–August 11, 1985.

Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.

Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.

Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. "Die Kunst des Alten Japan: Meisterwerke aus der Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," September 16, 1990–November 18, 1990.

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New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art," April 8, 2023–July 14, 2024.

Shimada Shūjirō, ed. Zaigai Hiho: O-Bei shuzo Nihon kaiga shusei (Japanese Paintings in Western Collections): Bukkyo kaiga, Yamatoe, Suibokuga. vol. 1, Tokyo: Gakken, 1969, p. 79.

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