Artworks

Kasuga Deer Mandala

Artwork · Anonymous · 1201–1400 · kakemono · Nara National Museum

Instead of a pilgrimage route, a large white deer appears on a cloud above the torii of the Kasuga Shrine, the Fujiwara family shrine at Nara; from its saddle rises a branch of sakaki framed by a mirror, on which the five kami of Kasuga sit in their Buddhist forms (honji suijaku). The mirror recalls Amaterasu and the two Fujiwara ancestors who coaxed her out of her cave; the deer, sacred on Mount Mikasa even before Buddhism, became the emblem of the Kasuga deities. 1 Mason 2005, p. 234, fig. 271. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.