Page of a Pilgrim’s Visiting Album

These album pages (14.140.2, .3) are two from a group of three that must at one point have belonged to a larger number, likely owned by a resident of Edo (Tokyo). Each of the three has a cover with multiple textile pieces, some of which may have come from Kan’eiji, a Tendai School temple in the Ueno area of Edo, for they bear the Dharma names of either the fourth or the tenth Tokugawa shogun, both of whom had their graves at the temple. One (14.140.2) has the name of the tenth shogun, “Shunmei’in dono” (Tokugawa Ieharu, 1737–1786). The one shown here, which has a similar cover, is pasted with a small painting of the Buddha Amida (Sanskrit: Amitābha) bordered with golden characters spelling out “Hail the name of Amida Buddha,” as well as an image of the bodhisattva Kannon (Sanskrit: Avalokiteshvara) and a paper slip also reading “Hail the name of Amida Buddha.” The pages’ owner would have obtained these small images on temple visits.