Artworks

Fūjin and Raijin, Sanjūsangendō

Artwork · Anonymous · 13th century · sculpture · Sanjūsangen-dō Temple

The gods of Wind and Thunder at the two ends of the platform before the thousand Kannon, with twenty-eight attendants probably made by Tankei’s studio in the 1250s. Both climb out of swirling thunderclouds with wide-open eyes looking down on the world: Fūjin holds the ends of his bag of wind, Raijin is ringed by drums he beats with dumbbell-shaped sticks. An unnamed Kei sculptor has given a dramatic, human form to the force and sound of a storm. 1 Mason 2005, p. 195, fig. 227. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.