Art Review: Spellbinding Treasures From Japan’s Kamakura Period at Asia Society

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A guardian king’s head, carved sometime in the 13th century, is part of “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan” at Asia Society.

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Byron Smith for The New York Times

In different times and places a combustive mix of realism and religion has given rise to some of the world’s greatest art. The European Renaissance was one such era. Another was the brief Kamakura period of Japan, from 1185 to 1333. “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan,” a spellbinding exhibition at Asia Society, features wonderfully vivid representations of Buddhist divinities.

The first piece visitors encounter may not seem to agree with modern notions of realism. It’s a dark, nearly 22-inch-tall head of a guardian king, whose ferocious expression appears more cartoonish than naturalistic, carved from Japanese cypress sometime in the 13th century. But he has an intense psychological presence in the smooth rendering of his deeply knit brow, gaping mouth revealing tongue and teeth, and bugged-out eyes made of rock crystal with pupils painted on the reverse, a signature innovation of the period. Originally attached to a whole, armor-clad warrior, this object does more than just symbolize a mythic character. It also seems to be an incarnation of divine ferocity, as if it were appearing in a dream or a hallucination. More than realism, this is visionary realism.

In Buddhist lore there are four guardian kings, whose mission is to defend temples and the Buddha from evil doers and to scare away fools and knaves ill-equipped for enlightenment. Guardian king images were particularly popular during the Kamakura period, partly because of anxieties about the threat of invasion by Mongols, who Japanese forces managed to repel in 1274 and 1281. Also, the period followed a time of violent domestic strife among warlords that caused the destruction of many temples and artworks. The Kamakura period ushered in a rebuilding and the creation of numerous vigorous new artworks.

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“Daiitoku Myoo, or the Wisdom King of Awe-Inspiring Power.”

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Byron Smith for The New York Times

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“Nyoirin Kannon.”

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Byron Smith for The New York Times

This exhibition’s most amazing sculpture represents another wrathful royal divinity: Daiitoku Myoo, or the Wisdom King of Awe-Inspiring Power. He has six faces, legs and arms and is riding a kneeling, pony-size water buffalo. The king’s foremost and largest face bears an expression of gleeful fury, and he holds a sword in one hand, a trident in another and, in a third, a noose for capturing people and dragging them on to the right spiritual path.

The water buffalo is a marvel of naturalistic representation, and the whole sculpture is a technical tour de force. That something so complicated could be made from wood — as opposed to cast in bronze — brings up another distinctive innovation of Kamakura sculpture. Rather than carving figures from single blocks of wood, artists sculpted parts from separate pieces and glued them together in a technique called yosegi-zukuri. This enabled the creation of bigger and more complex works.

Kamakura sculptures typically were brightly polychromed and gilded. Traces of their former colors can be seen on the works in this show, but most pieces have darkened so much over time that it’s hard to see that they’re made of wood rather than bronze.

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“Flying Attendant on Cloud.”

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Byron Smith for The New York Times

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“The Shinto Deity Hachiman in the Guise of a Buddhist Monk” (1328).

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Byron Smith for The New York Times

This exhibition, organized by the art historian Ive Covaci and Adriana Proser, the museum’s curator of traditional Asian art, offers, along with wrathful deities, numerous figures exuding beatific serenity. One of the most realistic is “The Shinto Deity Hachiman in the Guise of a Buddhist Monk” (1328). With his shaved head, crystalline eyes and slightly frowning lips, he sits in the lotus position, his robe enveloping his body in curving, gracefully rhythmic folds. He raises one beautifully carved hand and rests the other on his thigh. While this sculpture looks like the portrait of a real, meditating person, it actually represents a Shinto god. That religion predated the sixth-century arrival in Japan of Buddhism, which absorbed Shinto gods like Hachiman into its own pantheon.

When conservators disassembled the Hachiman sculpture they discovered an inscription inside its hollow head identifying it as the work of Koshun (active around 1315-1329). Artists signing their works was yet another development of Kamakura sculpture, and a number of the period’s masters are known; works by several of them are in this exhibition. There is a lovely, small sculpture representing the childlike figure Jizo Bosatsu by Zen’en (1197-1258), a member of the Zen-based school Zenpa. Three other works are by Kaikei (active around 1183-1223), including an impressively fierce yet calm representation of a seated, sword bearing Fudo Myoo, a deity who diverts anger toward salvation.

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A sculpture of Jizo Bosatsu.

Credit
Byron Smith for The New York Times

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Fudo Myoo, a deity who diverts anger toward salvation.

Credit
Byron Smith for The New York Times

The “Empowering Interiors” section of the show illustrates the tradition of depositing sacred objects and texts inside Buddhist statues to endow them with supernatural powers. The contents of a small version of Jizo Bosatsu by Koen (1207-after 1275) are displayed along with the statue. Among these items is an inventory compiled by a monk named Shaishin, who oversaw the sculpture’s consecration. It lists “one grain of a Buddha relic, gilt-bronze images of Shakyamuni and Amida” and “1,000 votive prints of Amida and Jizo.” As the art historian Nedachi Kensuke explains in his essay in the excellent catalog, such inclusions were supposed to give their sculptural housings “miraculous efficacy” in response to the prayers of believers.

Modern viewers may shrug off such practices as superstition. But the spiritual realism of this exhibition’s works still captivates.

At the start of her catalog essay, Ms. Covaci quotes an apt saying by the Buddhist monk Myoe (1173-1232): “When you think about an object carved from wood or drawn in a picture as if it were a living being, then it is a living being.”

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