Accounts and Images of Six Kannon in Japan

Accounts and Images of Six Kannon in Japan

Author: Sherry D. Fowler

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2016-11-30

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0824856252

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Buddhists around the world celebrate the benefits of worshipping Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), a compassionate savior who is one of the most beloved in the Buddhist pantheon. When Kannon appears in multiple manifestations, the deity’s powers are believed to increase to even greater heights. This concept generated several cults throughout history: among the most significant is the cult of the Six Kannon, which began in Japan in the tenth century and remained prominent through the sixteenth century. In this ambitious work, Sherry Fowler examines the development of the Japanese Six Kannon cult, its sculptures and paintings, and its transition to the Thirty-three Kannon cult, which remains active to this day. An exemplar of Six Kannon imagery is the complete set of life-size wooden sculptures made in 1224 and housed at the Kyoto temple Daihōonji. This set, along with others, is analyzed to demonstrate how Six Kannon worship impacted Buddhist practice. Employing a diachronic approach, Fowler presents case studies beginning in the eleventh century to reinstate a context for sets of Six Kannon, the majority of which have been lost or scattered, and thus illuminates the vibrancy, magnitude, and distribution of the cult and enhances our knowledge of religious image-making in Japan. Kannon’s role in assisting beings trapped in the six paths of transmigration is a well-documented catalyst for the selection of the number six, but there are other significant themes at work. Six Kannon worship includes significant foci on worldly concerns such as childbirth and animal husbandry, ties between text and image, and numerous correlations with Shinto kami groups of six. While making groups of Kannon visible, Fowler explores the fluidity of numerical deity categorizations and the attempts to quantify the invisible. Moreover, her investigation reveals Kyushu as an especially active site in the history of the Six Kannon cult. Much as Kannon images once functioned to attract worshippers, their presentation in this book will entice contemporary readers to revisit their assumptions about East Asia’s most popular Buddhist deity.


Jewel in the Ashes

Jewel in the Ashes

Author: Brian D. Ruppert

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-23

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 1684173388

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Focusing on the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, this study analyzes the ways in which relics functioned as material media for the interactions of Buddhist clerics, the imperial family, lay aristocrats, and warrior society and explores the multivocality of relics by dealing with specific historical examples. Brian Ruppert argues that relics offered means for reinforcing or subverting hierarchical relations. The author's critical literary and anthropological analyses attest to the prominence of relic veneration in government, in lay practice associated with the maintenance of the imperial line and warrior houses, and in the promotion of specific Buddhist sects in Japan.


Kaaawa

Kaaawa

Author: O. A. Bushnell

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1980-07-01

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 9780824807290

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"As beautiful as Hawaii itself, This novel approaches epic magnitude. The narrator is Hiram Nihoa, through whom the author pours his love for Hawaii. Nihoa tells the story of his travels around the island of Oahu a century ago, evoking the scene and the people as he saw and loved them. Nihoa's narrative is taken up by a strange New Englander in the second half of the book. Saul Bristol, a sad and bitter man, reveals Hawaii through the eyes of a newcomer. The two narratives embody the conflict between the old and the new which has had so much to do with the way Hawaii has developed.... In some ways ... a lament, but overall a mele aloha, a song of love." --Publisher's Weekly


Challenging Past and Present

Challenging Past and Present

Author: Ellen P. Conant

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2006-02-28

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0824840593

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The complex and coherent development of Japanese art during the course of the nineteenth century was inadvertently disrupted by a political event: the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Scholars of both the preceding Edo (1615–1868) and the succeeding Meiji (1868–1912) eras have shunned the decades bordering this arbitrary divide, thus creating an art-historical void that the former view as a period of waning technical and creative inventiveness and the latter as one threatened by Meiji reforms and indiscriminate westernization and modernization. Challenging Past and Present, to the contrary, demonstrates that the period 1840–1890, as seen progressively rather than retrospectively, experienced a dramatic transformation in the visual arts, which in turn made possible the creative achievements of the twentieth century. The first group of chapters takes as its theme the diverse cultural currents of the transitional period, particularly as they applied to art.The second section deals with the inconsistent yet determinedly pragmatic courses pursed by artists, entrepreneurs, and patrons to achieve a secure footing in the uncertain terrain of early Meiji. Further chapters look at how painters and sculptors sought to absorb and integrate foreign influences and reinterpret their own stylistic mediums.


Hawai'i Chronicles II

Hawai'i Chronicles II

Author: Robert P. Dye

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1997-12-01

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780824819842

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first volume of Hawaii Chronicles presented little known, yet highly interesting historical facts about Hawaii that originally appeared in the pages of Honolulu magazine, the successor to Paradise of the Pacific and the oldest continuously published regional magazine in the United States. Articles in the first volume ranged from the Islands' volcanic beginnings to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the first days of World War II. In this new volume, Hawaii Chronicles II looks at the people that have made a difference in the Islands since World War II, including artists and writers, politicians, local heroes, and leaders in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Through interviews and biographical profiles, this new collection provides a historical context for the events that have shaped Hawaii's recent past.


Early and Buddhist Stone Sculpture of Japan

Early and Buddhist Stone Sculpture of Japan

Author: Asoke Kumar Bhattacharyya

Publisher: Abhinav Publications

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 9788170174226

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Japan S Iconographical Material Covers Buddhism, Shintoism And A Few Other Smaller Sects In That Country. Yet Buddhist Iconography Sculptural And In Painting Constitutes By Far The Greatest In Number And Variety. Further, Again, Wood Sculpture In That Land Of Wood-Yielding Vegetation, Forms The Greater Measure Of Iconographic Material. In Fact, Japan Is Not So Fortunate In The Availability Of Stone That Can Stand Fine Chiselling Or Carving, As Chine And India. With This Background It As But Reasonable Justified That Specialist Study Of Stone Sculpture In Icons And Other Subjects Is Undertaken And Brought To The Notice Of Scholars And The Lay Public. In Doing So, The Available Stone Material: Early Artifacts, Religious Icons And Other Subjects Have Been Presented Here In Eight Sections And A Map. The Section Deal With Early Artefacts, Decorative Sculptures, Lanterns, Pagodas, Engravings, Buddha Images, Images Of The Buddhist Pantheon And Biku, Bikuni & Rakans.The Over All Survey Made Of The Sculptures Of The Buddha And The Buddhist Pantheon In Stone In Japan, Is A Unique Contribution To The Study Of Buddhist Iconography In General And That In Japan In Particular.


And the View from the Shore

And the View from the Shore

Author: Stephen H. Sumida

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2013-05-01

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0295803452

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This groundbreaking study of a little-explored branch of American literature both chronicles and reinterprets the variety of patterns found within Hawaii’s pastoral and heroic literary traditions, and is unprecedented in its scope and theme. As a literary history, it covers two centuries of Hawaii’s culture since the arrival of Captain James Cookin 1778. Its approach is multicultural, representing the spectrum of native Hawaiian, colonial, tourist, and polyethnic local literatures. Explicit historical, social, political, and linguistic context of Hawaii, as well as literary theory, inform Stephen Sumida’s analyses and explications of texts, which in turn reinterpret the nonfictional contexts themselves. These “texts” include poems, song lyrics, novels and short fiction, drama and oral traditions that epitomize cultural milieus and sensibilities. Hawaii’s rich literary tradition begins with ancient Polynesian chant and encompasses the compelling novels of O.A. Bushnell, Shelley Ota, Kazuo Miyamoto, Milton Marayama, and John Dominis Holt; the stories of Patsy Saiki and Darrell Lum; the dramas of Aldyth Morris; the poetry of Cathy Song, Erick Chock, Jody Manabe, Wing Tek Lum, and others of the contemporary “Bamboo Ridge” group; Hawaiian songs and poetry, or mele; and works written by visitors from outside the islands, such as the journals of Captain Cook and the prose fiction of Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and James Michener. Sumida discusses the renewed enthusiasm for native Hawaiian culture and the controversies over Hawaii’s vernacular pidgins and creoles. His achievement in developing a functional and accessible critical and intellectual framework for analyzing this diverse material is remarkable, and his engaging and perceptive analysis of these works invites the reader to explore further in the literature itself and to reconsider the present and future direction of Hawaii’s writers.