Artworks

Chigo Daishi (Kōbō Daishi as a child)

Artwork · Anonymous · 14th century · kakemono · Art Institute of Chicago

One of the most popular icons of the cult of Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi): the boy Kūkai at the moment he had a vision and told his parents he wanted to become a monk, kneeling on a lotus within a moon disc, hands together. Such chigo images belong to the tales of Enlightenment (hosshin mono) in which the love of an older monk for a novice leads to Enlightenment, the boy revealed as a bodhisattva. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 200–201, fig. 233. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.