Shokoku-ji Jotenkaku Museum 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Legacy of Zen Temples: Shokoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto

Over the centuries, Zen Buddhism and its institutions have served as a catalyst for the creation and preservation of Japanese art. Zen monasteries have built up extraordinary collections of artworks and transmitted them from generation to generation. This is especially the case for one of the most prominent monasteries in Japanese history, Kyoto’s Shōkoku-ji. Shōkoku-ji’s extraordinary collection of cultural treasures, which include those in its famous branch temples Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, are the subject of a special exhibition this fall titled The Legacy of Zen Temples: Shōkoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, to be held at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art from 11 October to 27 November 2024 and the University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts from 29 March to 25 May 2025.

The Legacy of Zen Temples will be the largest show ever to focus on the masterpieces of Shōkoku-ji and its affiliate temples. Founded by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), the third shogun of the Muromachi period (1392–1568), Shōkoku-ji was dedicated in the year 1392. During its construction, in keeping with tradition, the famous Zen monk Musō Soseki (1275–1351) was posthumously designated as the monastery’s ceremonial founding abbot, while the actual monk who oversaw its planning was Musō’s disciple Shun’oku Myōha (1311–1388). The monastery and its grand structures are located in front of Kyoto’s imperial palace and have survived a number of fires and later reconstructions; the magnificent campus can still be visited today. After its founding, Shōkoku-ji subsumed a number of important branch temples, including Rokuon-ji and Jishō-ji, better known as Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion) and Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion), respectively, both now popular tourist destinations. These two temples were formerly located within the retirement villas of medieval shoguns: Kinkaku-ji was originally part of Yoshimitsu’s Kitayama Villa, and Ginkaku-ji was part of the Higashiyama Villa of the eighth shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–1490).

The exhibition showcases the Shōkoku-ji collection of temple treasures in several different categories: Chinese painting, chinsō (Zen portraiture), ink painting by Zen monk-painters, and Edo-period painting. It details how works entered the monastic collection and explores their histories of transmission or loss. Although some artworks simply disappeared from the historical record, others were moved to different locales, and still others were destroyed by fire and war. Nevertheless, Shōkoku-ji has somehow managed to maintain the core of its collection for more than six hundred years.

Ashikaga authority over Japan peaked during the 14th and 15th centuries, and the reign of Yoshimitsu in particular witnessed an era of peace and flourishment. Two aspects of Yoshimitsu’s activities are particularly important with regard to the Shōkoku-ji collection: his encouragement of trade with Ming China and his strong devotion to Zen Buddhism. The latter may reflect the influence of his grandfather Takauji, the first Ashikaga shogun, who was a religious adherent of Musō. The presence of chinsō portraits by Musō and his disciples constitutes an important group of Shōkoku-ji treasures. Chinsō are displayed in mortuary rituals and often inscribed by the monk portrayed, thus preserving the precious discourse of a religious master in verse form. These portraits are not idealized likenesses; instead they depict their sitters with an abundance of realism, down to minutiae such as hair protruding from their ears and noses.

The formats, compositions, and motifs of Zen portraiture can be meaningful in ways that are less obvious. Portrait of Musō Soseki (fig. 1), for example, takes the form of a bust portrait, depicting only Musō’s upper torso. This format was chosen specifically in relation to a well-known Zen maxim that exhorts the practitioner to ‘look underfoot’, in keeping with the idea that the phenomenal world is illusory and that truth is often out of sight. Indeed, Musō was fond of inscribing the phrase kyakkonka no koto (that which is underfoot) on his portraits and a folding fan. The tatami mat on which he sits is bordered with colourful ungen-beri (striations) in a pattern that was reserved for members of the elite. This portrait conveys Yoshimitsu’s faith and power at the same time.

The engagement of Musō’s successors with religious counterparts on the continent resulted in an influx of Chinese paintings into the Shōkoku-ji collection. According to legend, Zekkai Chūshin (1336–1405), a disciple of Musō who travelled to China from 1368 to 1376, bought back Cranes (fig. 4), the only known work by the painter Wen Zheng (active c. 14th century). Famous as a painter of birds and flowers, Wen Zheng rendered his cranes with extraordinary realism and exacting detail. Cranes would serve as a model for Japanese painters during the Edo period (1615–1868) and was copied by a number of prominent Edo-period artists, including Kanō Tan’yū (1602–1674) and Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800).

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*Portrait of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu*
Attributed to Tosa Yukihiro (active c. 15th century), with inscription by Ashikaga Yoshimochi (1386–1428); Muromachi period (c. 1336–1573), 1408
Hanging scroll, ink and colours on silk; 96.9 x 56.6 cm
Rokuon-ji, Kyoto, Important Cultural Property

Yoshimitsu was a strong admirer of continental paintings, and through his efforts the foundation was laid for the famous Ashikaga collection of Chinese art. After his death, the collection was expanded by two of his sons: the fourth shogun Yoshimochi (1386–1428) and the sixth shogun Yoshinori (1394–1441). A number of works that entered the collection under Yoshinori are pressed with the seal Zakkashitsu-in (Abode of Variegated Flowers), referring to a chamber in his Muromachi Palace. One such work bearing this seal is The Sixth Zen Patriarch Huineng (fig. 5), a particularly notable work with remarkably fine brushwork delineating the patriarch’s face. The inscription at the top of the scroll was brushed by Wuxue Zuyuan (1226–1286), a prominent Chinese monk who came to Japan during the Kamakura period (c. 1185–1333):

Transmitting the Dharma is filled with obstacles!
Only effort should be rewarded, one cannot eat
for nothing.
The midnight echoes of pounding rice;
The patriarch’s stones on his waist is as heavy as
a mountain.

The inscription likens the striving for spiritual enlightenment to daily labour and seems to refer directly to the pestle carried by the patriarch in the painting. In this manner, The Sixth Zen Patriarch Huineng mobilizes both word and image to convey its message.

Not all Zen paintings, however, were reliant on inscriptions to convey their meanings to viewers. The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures (fig. 6), attributed to the monk-painter Shūbun (active c. 1414–1463), is an example of a purely pictorial parable. This scroll, which consists of a sequence of ten images, likens the mind to an ox that wanders and thus remains elusive to its owner. Replacing the word ‘ox’ with ‘mind’ in the titles for the stages makes the meaning of the parable clear: ‘Searching for the Ox’, ‘Finding the Footprints’, ‘Perceiving the Ox’, ‘Catching the Ox’, ‘Taming the Ox’, ‘Riding the Ox Home’, ‘Transcending the Ox’, ‘Forgetting the Ox and the Self’, ‘Reaching the Source’, and ‘Returning to Society’. The wordless manner in which the paintings convey meaning is manifest most eloquently in the ninth painting, which consists of nothing but a blank field.

Shōkoku-ji’s transition to the early modern era was shaped by the influence of powerful warlords. When the hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) unified his authority over Japan during the late 16th century, he turned to Shōkoku-ji’s abbot Saishō Jōtai (1548–1608) as an advisor. So too did Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), who succeeded Hideyoshi as supreme hegemon. Because of the monastery’s connection to Ieyasu, it was perhaps inevitable that the leading shogunal painter-in-attendance, Kano Tan’yū (1602–1674), would be mobilized to create works for the monastery. One significant example of Tan’yū’s, work now counted as a temple treasure, is Wagtail, Pigeon, Magpie, and Rooster (fig. 7). This set of paintings takes the form of zachō byōbu (small standing screens), which were used to partition space between seated individuals. They were used in a ceremony marking the three hundredth anniversary of Musō Soseki’s death and created on the request of Hōrin Jōshō (1593–1668), an abbot of both Shōkoku-ji and Rokuon-ji.

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*The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures*
Attributed to Shūbun (active c. 1423–1457); Muromachi period (c. 1336–1568), 14th century
Detail of four out of ten paintings, hand scroll, ink and colours on paper; 32.3 x 184.4 cm
Shōkoku-ji, Kyoto

Hōrin’s diary, Kakumeiki, includes an abundance of information about the artists with whom the monk interacted and is particularly informative with regard to Tan’yū. It records in detail, for example, the circumstances surrounding the production of Wagtail, Pigeon, Magpie, and Rooster. According to the diary, on the second day of the third month of 1648, Hōrin visited Tan’yū while the painter was in Kyoto and brought him painting silks for the screens that he had commissioned from him. Tan’yū subsequently returned to Edo (now Tokyo) and sent the finished works to Hōrin later that year, on the sixth day of the ninth month. Hōrin received the paintings and promptly had them mounted as standing screens the following day. These entries thus clarify important details about the paintings, including their purpose, the time it took to create them, and the fact that the mounting was done independently from the painter.

The style of Tan’yū’s paintings is also noteworthy, as it is based on the study of classical Chinese paintings formerly in the Ashikaga shogunal collection. Tan’yū’s rendering of the wagtail on a lotus leaf, for example, resembles Kingfisher and Wagtail, a work attributed to the Chinese Chan monk-painter Muqi (active c. 13th century) now in the MOA Museum of Art. Tan’yū was known to be an avid student of paintings by East Asian masters, of which he produced numerous shukuzu (small-scale copies). Here it is likely that he emulated Muqi because Muqi was particularly admired by Yoshimitsu. The style of the paintings also resonated with the taste for alcove hangings in the tea ceremony, which would have been appropriate, as the serving of tea formed part of the observances commemorating Musō.

While painters of the Kano and Tosa schools served the elite, the mid-18th century also witnessed the emergence of many painters from the commoner classes. One such artist, Itō Jakuchū, had particularly close relations with Shōkoku-ji. Jakuchū hailed from a family of greengrocers and was a devout practitioner of Zen. His religious master, Baisō Kenjō (1719–1801), served as abbot of Shōkoku-ji and counted numerous literati and artists as members of his cultural salon. Although Jakuchū was especially well known for his gorgeous polychrome works, Shōkoku-ji also preserves accomplished works by him in monochrome ink, specifically a cycle of sliding door paintings for Rokuon-ji temple. Crane and Pine Trees (fig. 8) consists of four panels from of a set of fifty preserved at Rokuon-ji. They were painted in 1759 for the monk Ryūmon Jōyū (1743–1800) on his promotion to abbot of Rokuon-ji. On its surface one finds the following inscription by the artist:

Looking down and looking up, along the
path through the pine forest.
The mind that achieves awakening is up
in the sky.

The inscription seems to describe the accompanying painting, in which a crane looks up at the sky. As such, the Zen practitioner is implicitly likened to the crane in their mutual striving for spiritual advancement. Crane and Pine Trees showcases Jakuchū’s tremendous skill as an ink painter; the abstract strokes of the pine needles are formed with a novel technique employing a wide brush, while the crane is outlined in sharp, sophisticated lines with light grey modelling around its contour. The resulting effect is as naturalistic as any of his polychrome works. Jakuchū referred to Chinese paintings in developing this style of ink painting, as the form of the crane closely resembles those of the 16th-century Chinese artist Chen Baichong’s (active c. 16th century) Pair of Cranes in Dai’un-in temple.

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*Crane and Pine Trees*
Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800); Edo period (c. 1603–1868), 1759
Set of four sliding-door panels, ink on paper; 168.5 x 93 cm
Rokuon-ji temple, Kyoto, Important Cultural Property

In this period artists studied Chinese paintings through the mediation of collectors and temples. Events known as shogakai (‘painting parties’, which could also include calligraphy) became increasingly common at temples, shrines, and restaurants. At Jishō-ji such painting parties were known to have been held on at least two occasions, in the years 1766 and 1789. These gatherings were known as ‘Dōjinsai painting and calligraphy displays’ after a famous chamber known as the Dōjin-sai (Room of Mutual Benevolence) within the monastery’s Tōgudō (Hall of the Eastern Quest). Because more than one hundred paintings and works of calligraphy were displayed on these occasions, other rooms must have been used as well. Records indicate that both occasions showcased Chen Nan Standing on Waves (fig. 9) by the Chinese painter Liu Jun (active c.15th century), along with many other classical works by Chinese and Japanese masters. Painting parties included not only works from Shōkoku-ji but also other temples and private collections, such as that of the wealthy merchant Kimura Kenkadō (1736–1802), who exhibited Ming paintings from his collection. These occasions provided ample opportunity for Jakuchū and the other Edo painters to study important works.

Shōkoku-ji has continued to collect antique paintings into the present and now exhibits its collection at the monastery’s Jōtenkaku Museum in Kyoto. The collection is particularly notable for Zen-related works from the Muromachi period. In 2004, 126 works were donated from the Manno Collection, including numerous national treasures and important cultural properties, such as the set of handscrolls Seven Fortunes and Misfortunes (fig. 10) by Maruyama Ōkyo. This work is part of a group of paintings created by Ōkyo in his thirties under the influence of Yūjo (1722–1773), the abbot of Enman-in temple. Seven Fortunes and Misfortunes, which took three years to complete, consists of three scrolls dealing with natural disasters, manmade disasters, and fortunes, respectively. The scene of a great conflagration illustrated here reflects the careful study of emaki (medieval picture scrolls) both in the expression of the fire and in the figures fleeing in terror from it.

The Legacy of Zen Temples tells the story of how Shōkoku-ji came to constitute such a remarkable cultural archive. The origins of Shōkoku-ji’s cultural profile go back to Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who strongly admired Chinese paintings and artworks related to Zen Buddhism. These works were preserved by his successors Yoshimochi and Yoshinori, who proceeded to add to the collection. As a result, the monastery earned the reputation of a repository of important East Asian masterpieces. During the 17th century, painters of the Kano school relied on its collection as an important reference for classicism, as did Edo painters of the 18th century. This exhibition celebrates the artistic legacy of Shōkoku-ji and demonstrates how its allure and cultural impact have continued unabated into the present.

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*The Seven Fortunes and Misfortunes*
Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795); Edo period (c. 1603–1868), 1768
Detail from the second of three handscrolls, ink and colour on paper; 32.2 x 1590.8 cm
Shōkoku-ji, Kyoto, Important Cultural Property

Legacy of Zen Temples: Shokoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto' is on view at Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art from 11 October to 27 November 27, 2024 and at The University Art Museum at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 29 March to 25 May, 2025.

Authored by the organizing committee of the 2024 Shokokuji Exhibition.

SEP/OCT 2024

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Shokoku-ji Jotenkaku Museum 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Legacy of Zen Temples: Shokoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto

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