BuddhasInTheWest

Ueno Daibutsu Postcard

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Only the face of the Ueno Daibutsu remains in Tokyo’s Ueno Park. Toppled during the 1923 Kantō earthquake, the salvaged body was eventually melted down during the Pacific War.


Picture postcards are some of the only remaining images of the intact statue. This plain design on the reverse reveals the print was made prior to 1907.

Q&A) Note, there is no address on the reverse…so why is there a cancelled stamp on the obverse?

The caption style is strongly reminiscent of the professional Japanese tourist photography trade that grew steadily thorough the 1890s. Contemporary databases do not currently link this stock number and location with a known photographer.


Ueno Park is celebrated for its spring cherry blossoms, highlighted here by the hand-colorist who painted the trees pink. Q&A) The stamp and cancellation on the front suggest this card was intended for display in a postcard album.

After many years in storage in the nearby temple, the Daibutsu face was displayed in 1972 on the site of the original statue.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Hamburg–American Cruise Postcard

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The first regular around-the-world commercial cruises began in the early 1920s. The Great Buddha of Kamakura was an iconic stop on the long sea passage; its international stature as a tourist destination was equivalent to the Taj Mahal and the Sphinx.

Within a decade, circumnavigation of the globe by passenger liner transformed into a stalwart luxury industry. The Hamburg–American Line was one of the main companies in the inter-war period.

Passengers kept family or friends abreast of their travels by having postcards automatically sent from ocean liner offices around the world. Here we see notification of the Resolute arriving in the ports of Japan on April 24, 1934. Tours through Nikko and Kamakura are noted.

The photograph printed here depicts a seemingly orchestrated scene that highlights the foreignness and apparent piousness of the Japanese.

The travel and souvenir journal of Eleanor Phelps, who embarked on the inaugural American Express Co. cruise around the world in 1922, is held by the University of South Carolina, viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/avt4xt2p.

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The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Arbuckle Bros. Coffee Japan Advertising Card

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Vibrant Victorian trade cards stuck out among a sea of black and white advertising. In the early age of engraved mass publications, chromolithography ushered in a new era of visual media.

Trade cards were popular advertising materials from 1875 to 1900. Typically businesses printed text-heavy advertising copy on the reverse of the card, saving the obverse for an image.

Here, Arbukle Bros. Coffee produced a 50 card set depicting around-the-world travel. This trade card highlights Yokohama, Japan, a treaty port city popular among 19th century tourists.

In reality, the card shows stereotypical imagery of Japan, including costumes, landscapes, and professions easily identifiable to foreign travelers.

The Buddhist icon is unidentified, but this card reveals generic Buddhist imagery was closely connected to the popular image of Japan.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Hyōgo Daibutsu Vignette Postcard

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The original Hyōgo Daibutsu 兵庫大仏 was dismantled as part of Japanese war efforts during WWII. It was motivated by the Ordinance on the Collection of Metals issued in 1941. At the time, it was the third largest Buddhist statue in Japan.

Constructed in 1891, photographs of the Hyōgo Daibutsu were often printed on Japanese postcards of the era. Based on the design on the back of this card we know it was published before 1907.


The blank space on the front of this card was intended for the written message. The reverse was saved for the address only.


This card is uncommon because it combines a collotype print with an added pink cherry blossom frame. The angular band of discoloration on the corner reveals it was stored in a postcard album.


Most photographic Japanese post cards of this period were individually hand-painted. This continued into the 1910s until multi-color printing became more commonplace.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Herbert Ponting’s Nichiren Priest Stereoview

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Is this the first stereoscopic 3D portrait of a Buddhist abbot? While many Japanese Buddhist priests were photographed for stereoviews by 1905, the year this card was issued, this is a rare occasion where we have an indication of the priest’s identity.

The caption tells us the priest is the head of Ikegami Temple (Honmon-ji #本門寺) of the Nichiren school. We also know the photographer, Herbert Ponting, was hired by H.C. White to take photos of the Russo-Japanese War and he toured Japan through the end of 1906.

There are two potential identifications of this priest, but it is likely Kubota Nichiki 久保田日亀(1841–1911), who became the 68th generation abbot in 1899. He holds a fly-whisk, a sign authority.

By the 20th century, stereoviews were seen as important educational tools and the backs of many cards were imprinted with information, sometimes reflecting contemporary views and biases. This description notes the Nichiren school emphasized “the most flagrant superstitions.”

Ponting would eventually author a book on his travels in Japan, entitled In Lotus-Land Japan, illustrated with photos he had originally taken as stereoviews. The book can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/hhzhsnm9

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D.A. Ahuja’s Postcard Buddhas

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At the turn of the twentieth century, D. A. Ahuja was chronicling Burmese Buddhist culture in stunning color.

Operating out of Rangoon (modern Yangon) Ahuja published some of the highest quality picture postcards in Asia.

Ahuja outsourced printing to Germany, the commercial center of postcard printing worldwide. By 1903, German printing houses were putting out two postcards for every human on the planet.

These German firms used a lithographic-halftone hybrid process, first applying layers of color using a lithographic substrate and then applying a black halftone screen. Only the final key plate carried the fine black detail of the photograph.

Despite having his name imprinted on the reverse of the card, Ahuja either licensed or pirated this image from a competitor, Philip Klier, who used this photo on earlier black and white postcards.

A handful of Ahuja’s postcards can be viewed at the New York Public Library website: https://tinyurl.com/z9np5myb.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Greta Garbo’s Guanyin in The Painted Veil (1934)

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A theatrical still of Greta Garbo in the 1934 film The Painted Veil gazing upon a standing image of Guanyin. Looking closely, we see Garbo’s hand touching the shoulder of Guanyin, a moment of contact between the “icons.”

Theatrical stills – shot since the advent of feature films in the 1910s – are production photographs. Many were kept by the studio in albums called keybooks, while others were printed for promotional purposes, often marked with a code (here we see 776–42).

As advertising material, stills would often picture “tension, struggle, action,” but not reveal main elements of the plot, as noted by David Shields.

The scene here is not in the final edit of The Painted Veil, but would have occurred when Garbo’s character arrived in rural China during a cholera outbreak. The touch of the shoulder signaled an arrival into a far-away land, reflected in the materiality of the Buddhist icon.

For more on the history and interpretation of early film still photography, see David S. Shields’ Still: American Silent Motion Picture Photography (2013).

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Kannon Hase-dera Talisman

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Isabella Stewart Gardner, founder of Gardner Museum, was an early American collector of Asian art with an affinity towards Buddhist artifacts.

Gardner returned from Asia in 1884 with a Japanese talisman very similar to the one shown here. Both talismans came from Kamakura Hasa-dera 長谷寺 and depict the temple’s main Kannon icon. Talismans (ofuda お札) are woodblock prints sold by various shrines and temples typically for their protective or salutary effects. They were also popular among Japanese pilgrims.

Printed on thin paper, pilgrims would often carry these talismans in a special bag called a fudabasami.

A close examination of the print shows small details, including this pagoda.

Buddhist imagery proved inspirational for Garder as she commissioned John Stewart Sargent to paint her portrait in 1888 which bears a strong likeness to the standing Kannon icon. A discussion of the portrait and its Buddhist influence can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/359r522m.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Postcard from the Old Shinkōji Daibutsu

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It’s said the postcard was the first truly democratic photograph, providing people with images of places and things for the cost of a few pennies. In 1913, Japanese postal carriers delivered 1.5 billion cards, second only to Germany with 1.8 billion cards delivered.

In Japan, postcards of Buddhist temples, priests, and other elements of religious practice were popular as both domestic and foreign souvenirs as well as collector’s items (postcard collecting is known as deltiology).

Collecting picture postcards (ehagaki 絵葉書) for display in albums was commonplace. In the case of the postcard here, the stamp is affixed to the image side of the card – this allows the stamp and postal mark to be displayed when the card is attached to an album page.

According to the postal mark, the stamp was cancelled on October 1, 1925 (Taisho 14) in Kobe, the same location as the statue in the image. The cost of international postage for postcards at this time was four sen. The final destination of this card was France.

The composition of the photograph includes people thus helping us gauge the size of the Buddhist state. As far as I can tell, this state was destroyed in World War II by allied firebomb attacks on Kobe in March 1945.

Joanne Bernardi has curated a wonderful collection of Japanese postcards at the University of Rochester, available to be viewed here: https://tinyurl.com/57fae58f.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Shimooka Renjō’s Daibutsu Carte-de-visite

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Shimooka Renjō 下岡蓮杖 was one of the first Japanese to practice commercial photography, opening a studio in Yokohama in 1862. A treaty port teaming with globetrotting tourists, Yokohama was also in close proximity to the Kamakaura Daibutsu.

This is a bronze statue of Amida Buddha dating to the 13th century. The small format carte-de-visite (CDV) print shown here is hand dated to October 7, 1871 – possibly the date when a tourist visited the Daibutsu site. Renjō’s stamp identifies him as the photographer.

The portability of the CDV made them good souvenirs of travel, especially before the picture postcard industry blossomed a few decades later. The thin photosensitized print was affixed to thicker card stock for added durability.

Even small details can be captured by the relatively early wet-plate photographic process.

For an excellent introduction to early Japanese photography and 19th century tourist photography see the collection at Harvard Library here: https://tinyurl.com/yfsbj7du.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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