Artworks

Rakan, from the Gohyaku Rakanji

Artwork · attributed to Shōun Genkei · 1688–1695 · sculpture · The Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of the five hundred rakan that Shōun Genkei (1648–1710), a Buddhist sculptor turned wandering priest, carved for the Gohyaku Rakanji in Edo between 1688 and 1695 with permission of an Ōbaku abbot and support from the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi: yosegi-zukuri with black lacquer and gold leaf, less polished than the Chinese sculptor Fan Daosheng’s, but closer to Japanese naturalism. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 308–309, fig. 358. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.