Portraits Art: Kuya-Shonin (Saint Kuya)

In its original state, the naturalism of the carved figure would have been enhanced by paint and inset crystal eyes. Although the specificity of this sculpture’s features suggests the likeness of an individual, the work is a posthumous portrait, created some two hundred years after the subject’s death.

Housed in the Rokuharamitsuji temple in Kyoto, St. Kuyacommemorates the temple’s legendary founder Kuya-Shonin (also known as Kuuya Shoonin), a tenth-century itinerant Buddhist priest. It is believed that Kuya established the temple in 951 and dedicated it to the goddess of healing in hopes of securing her assistance against an epidemic that was sweeping across the region. In addition to his role in the temple’s founding, Kuya was an important forerunner of the Jodo, or Pure Land, sect of Buddhism that emerged in Japan in the late twelfth century.

Following the philosophy of the seventh-century Chinese priest Shan-tao, Kuya and others taught that birth in the Pure Land, or Western Paradise, of the Amida Buddha could be achieved simply through faith and the recitation of the nembutsu, or name of Amida. Kosho’s St. Kuya shows the holy man in the act of recitation. In striking contrast to the realistic figural representation, the artist has added a more conceptual element to the work. The syllables of the nembutsu—namu Amida butsu(meaning “Praise to Amida Buddha”)—are given physical substance in form of six small buddhas that emerge from the statue’s mouth. Paradoxically, the contemporary viewer would have identified the figure not by his carefully rendered face (which could not have been based on Kuya’s actual features), but by the presence of these visualized syllables, along with his traveling attire and gong. In the context of the temple, the manifestation of the recitation serves other purposes as well. It both attests to Kuya’s own salvation and acts as a model for temple worshippers, allowing the saint to continue teaching even in death.