A close look at this picture reveals an extraordinary technical feat: every single element—figures, architecture, tree, even shading—is delineated in tiny Chinese characters that spell out a section of the Lotus Sutra. At once an artistic tour de force and a demonstration of remarkable religious piety, it was created by Katō Nobukiyo, a minor government official who took Buddhist vows in his early fifties. In 1788 he began creating a set of fifty-one painted scrolls. On all but one he painted ten rakan (enlightened followers of the Buddha); an image of the Buddha with attendant bodhisattvas appears on the fifty-first. In 1792 he dedicated the complete set (including this work) to Ryūkōji, temple in Edo (present-day Tokyo).
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加藤信清筆 羅漢図
Title:Ten Rakan Examining a Painting of White-Robed Kannon
Artist:Katō Nobukiyo (Japanese, 1734–1810)
Period:Edo period (1615–1868)
Date:1788–92
Culture:Japan
Medium:Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Dimensions:Image: 55 1/4 × 22 3/4 in. (140.3 × 57.8 cm) Overall with mounting: 91 1/8 × 32 5/8 in. (231.5 × 82.9 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015
Accession Number:2015.300.217
The artist Katō Nobukiyo (1734–1810), once all but forgotten, is today enjoying a modest revival. A minor official in the Tokugawa government who lived in Edo, he left his family in his early fifties and took vows of abstinence. In 1788, he began a project to produce a group of fifty rakan paintings, each with ten figures.[1] To this set Nobukiyo added a painting of a Shaka Triad.[2] The fifty-one scrolls were completed in 1792 and dedicated to Ryūkōji, Edo.[3] A seal reading "Kōfu Ryūkō Zenji Jyūbutsu" (A Treasure of the Edo Zen Temple Ryūkō) is impressed at the left. The Burke scroll is one of this set.
The rakan in the composition are shown examining a painting of White-Robed Kannon (Skt: Pandaravasini), the bodhisattva of compassion (see cat. no. 49). Closely scrutinized, the work reveals an extraordinary technical feat: all the pictorial elements—the figures, the architecture, the tree, the painted scroll—are delineated in Chinese characters. Even facial details and areas that appear to be shaded with color and white pigment are, in fact, clusters of thinly drawn Chinese characters. The characters spell out a section of the Lotus Sutra. While most of them are difficult to read because they are necessarily compressed or distorted to conform to the shapes they constitute, the title of chapter 4, "Shingehon dai yon" (Belief and Understanding), is legible in the upper left corner among the boughs of the tree. In this chapter the disciples of Shaka Buddha recite a parable about the son of a rich man who returns home after a long absence.[4] The technique that Nobukiyo used has a long tradition that reaches back at least to Tang China. Individual characters and scripts were often considered sacred and endowed with special meaning. Thus, the early Buddhist practice of "writing" a sacred image (usually a pagoda) with lines of a sacred text had a special potency. Many examples survive from the Late Heian period.[5] During the Muromachi period, the practice continued but the pagoda was supplanted in popularity by images of the Guardian King Fūdō Myōō (Achala) and Monju (Manjushri), the bodhisattva of wisdom.
Before Nobukiyo the technique had been limited to the outlining of images, using gold pigment or black ink. By employing colors Nobukiyo was able to fill most of the painting surface with words, using them to represent folds of clothing, exposed skin, rough tree bark, even the darkened background in the painting-within-a-painting of Kannon. It is a tour de force of patient but obsessive piety and technical skill.[6]
According to the Koga bikō (Notes on Old Painters), most of the scrolls were dispersed from Ryūkōji in 1892.[7] Today, only two, including the Shaka Triad, remain at the temple.
GWN
[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]
[1] Pal and Meech-Pekarik 1988, p. 323.
[2] Shōtō Art Museum of Shibuya Ward 1995, pls. 56, 57.
[3] Suzuki Hiroyuki 1989, p. 40.
[4] For this text, see Daizōkyō 1914–32, vol. 9, no. 262, pp. 16–19. [5] Miya Tsugio 1976.
[6] For other paintings by Nobukiyo in this technique, see Shōtō Art Museum of Shibuya Ward 1995, pp. 53–59; and Shōtō Art Museum of Shibuya Ward 1996, pp. 56–58.
[7] Asaoka Okisada 1905 (1912 ed.), p. 1174.
Signature: Hoke-kyo ichibu yokan o motte kinsho Enjinsai Nobukiyo
Marking: Seals: Nobukiyo, Nobukiyo In, Kudoku Muhen
Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)
New York. Asia Society. "The Image and the Word: Buddhist Manuscript Illuminations," April 9, 1987–June 7, 1987.
Richmond. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. "Jewel Rivers: Japanese Art from The Burke Collection.," October 25, 1993–January 2, 1994.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art. "Jewel Rivers: Japanese Art from The Burke Collection.," February 26, 1994–April 24, 1994.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Jewel Rivers: Japanese Art from The Burke Collection.," October 14, 1994–January 1, 1995.
Katonah Museum of Art. "Object as Insight: Japanese Buddhist Art and Ritual," January 14, 1996–March 17, 1996.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Object as Insight: Japanese Buddhist Art and Ritual," April 19, 1996–June 30, 1996.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Flowing Streams: Scenes from Japanese Arts and Life," December 21, 2006–June 3, 2007.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Japan: A History of Style," March 8, 2021–April 24, 2022.
Pal, Pratapaditya, and Julia Meech-Pekarik. Buddhist Book Illuminations. New York: Ravi Kumar Publishers, 1988, p. 314, pl. 100.
Graham, Patricia J. Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007, p. 156, pl. 20, fig. 6.3.
Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], p. 358, cat. no. 438.
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