Buddhist statue

Tōdai-ji’s Heavenly King Bishamonten Postcard

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Hidden among the treasures of Nara’s Tōdai-ji stands a fierce guardian: Bishamonten, the Heavenly King of the North. Clad in armor with eyes blazing, this towering 4.2-meter cypress statue exemplifies the remarkable craftsmanship of thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist sculpture.

Bishamonten, adapted from the Indian deity Vaiśravaṇa, is foremost a “demon subduer who subjugates maleficent entities,” and by extension serves as a protector of the Buddhist teachings and of the rulers who uphold them. In Japan, he also came to be revered as a patron deity of warriors.

This postcard was published by Tōdai-ji, the historically powerful temple complex in the ancient capital of Nara. It was likely issued as part of a souvenir set in the late 1930s. The small emblem in the stamp box depicts the great fish-shaped roof ornament crowning the temple’s main hall.

In his hand Bishamonten holds a miniature pagoda, a reliquary associated with the relics of the Buddha. The object underscores his role as a guardian of the Buddhist teachings, while also reflecting his parallel identity as a protector of treasure and bestower of prosperity.

For this reason, Bishamonten is also venerated as one of Japan’s Seven Gods of Good Fortune. For more on the many roles of Bishamonten, see Bernard Faure, Gods of Medieval Japan: Protectors and Predators (2015).

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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Engraving of John Thomson’s Photograph of Gushan’s Monks

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After Fuzhou opened to foreign trade in 1842, missionaries, merchants, and travelers began climbing the stone stairway to Gushan. The dramatic setting with temple roofs rising from forested slopes above the Min River plain made it irresistible to photographers and travel writers.

Set on the peaks of Gushan, Yongquan Monastery was a large complex with many monks and thus drew considerable attention from foreigners. The temple was relatively close to the city center of Fuzhou, making excursions into the mountains feasible for many.

The woodcut engraving depicting the monks of Gushan appeared in an 1884 edition of L’Univers illustré, an illustrated weekly French newspaper. The accompanying short article notes the Buddhist monastery on Gushan “ranks among the most renowned” in Fuzhou.

Scottish photographer John Thomson took many photos of Fuzhou and the Min River in the 1870s, including the monks of Yongquan Monastery. This engraving clearly draws upon a photograph first published by Thomson in his Foochow and the River Min (1873).

The artist R. Caton Woodville transformed Thomson’s formal sitting portrait into a more animated scene with monks walking by the temple gate; the Heavenly King statue was added for dramatic effect. To compare the engraving with Thomson’s photo, see here: https://tinyurl.com/yeuepkht.

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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Sandringham Laughing Buddha Real Photo Post Card

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This gilded Laughing Buddha wearing an eight-pointed crown once graced a Chinese Buddhist monastery. Today, the statue sits in a very different setting on the grounds of the royal Sandringham estate as an unusual imperial garden ornament.

The Sandringham Buddha was sent to Britain by Admiral Sir Henry Keppel in 1869. After encountering the statue in Beijing, he shipped it home aboard HMS Rodney and presented it to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) as a gift for the newly built Sandringham House.

The image here was produced as a “real photo” postcard—created by printing a photographic positive directly onto photosensitized postcard stock. This card was mailed in 1913, near the end of the great postcard boom that was soon cut short by the First World War.

In the 1870s, estate carpenters built a wooden pagoda canopy above the statue, flanked by granite Japanese lions. The structure stood for decades before eventually rotting away and being demolished in 1960, leaving the Buddha exposed.

It is thought the statue was cast in 1690 and was found to have many Chinese coins inside it, likely offerings placed there by pious Buddhists. For more on this icon, see Jamie Carstairs’ “Location/Dislocation” viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/5w4tbpr7.

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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Au Bon Marché’s Chinese Idolatry Advertising Card

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The centuries-long fascination with the Chinese-inspired aesthetic known as Chinoiserie had waned considerably by the end of the 19th century. Yet the famed Parisian department store Au Bon Marché continued to draw upon its familiar imagery for a series of popular advertising cards.

Chinoiserie offered a dreamlike vision of China, populated with pagodas, lush landscapes, and mysterious idols. After the First Opium War (1839–1842) and the expansion of colonial contact, however, depictions of China grew less romanticized, increasingly depicting the it as a land of idolatry.

Au Bon Marché was reputedly the first store in Paris to distribute free lithographic prints to children, a practice soon adopted by other major department stores. Printed by Testu & Massin, this card belonged to a set of six illustrating various “Oriental” scenes.

The colorful image blends the ethereal with the corporeal, showing children prostrating before a Buddhist-style idol.

The idol itself merges a cross-legged Buddha with a racialized caricature of a Chinese man, complete with a long mustache and posed in what was known in France as the “Chinese dance.”

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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Robert Phillips’ “Thibetan Musicians” Postcard

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Despite the ambiguous caption—”A Group of Thibetan Musicians”—the history behind this anonymous photograph is remarkably well-documented. Taken by Robert Phillips before 1873, we see a gathering of the resident lamas at Sangchen Thongdrol Ling, a Nyingma monastery in Darjeeling.

Phillips, who operated a prominent studio in the colonial hill-station, submitted his photograph to the Illustrated London News which published an engraving of this image with an accompanying article in 1873. The sitting lama are described as natives of Sikkhim posing with ritual instruments.

Great Britain pioneered divided back postcards in 1902, allowing messages on the address side for the first time. This innovation sparked a surge in popularity for postcards featuring full-view images—even if, as in this case, the photographs were already decades old.

The newspaper article identifies figure on the far left as the head officiating lama. Before him are placed ritual instruments including a small hand drum, a vajra scepter, and bell.

A small Buddhist icons rests above the doorway with small brass offering bowls of oil and rice set on both sides. The main altar, not visible in the photograph, reportedly enshrined an image of Padmasambhava, the Indian adept famed for introducing Tantric Buddhism into Tibet.

Often described as the oldest Buddhist monastery in Darjeeling, the temple was forced to relocate in 1879 to Ging by British authorities. To read more about details in Phillips’ photograph, consult the Illustrated London News article, viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/329mh668.

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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The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) Art Studio Photograph

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In this behind-the-scenes photo from The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), MGM’s workshop prepares towering Buddhist statues for use as set design. Despite present-day associations with peace, art director Cedric Gibbons relied on this monumental Buddhist imagery to evoke mystery and danger.

Gibbons made faithful reproductions of arhat statues, figures known in East Asia for having exaggerated and misshapen bodies and heads–signs of their supernatural attainments. These facts were unknown to most audiences who would have viewed them as expression of Fu Manchu’s grotesque villainy.

As typed on the back, the woman in the photo was Leila Hyams, an MGM studio actor who did not appear in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but had starred in MGM films since 1928.

The statue in the rear with a hood is the famous Zen patriarch, Bodhidharma (perhaps his first depiction in American film?) In East Asia, Bodhidharma was sometimes included in sets of eighteen arhats that flanked the walls of Buddhist monasteries.

These oversized temple statuary, detached from their religious context, became atmospheric props signaling an imagined Asian world to Western audiences. For further discussion of Asian representation in cinema, see Naomi Greene’s From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda (2014).

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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Kimbei’s Five Hundred Arhats of Zenpō-ji Photograph

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Founded in the 10th century, Zenpō-ji, a Sōtō Zen monastery, is renowned for the protective prayers its resident priests chant each day. The temple is also famous for its remarkable collection of more than five hundred arhat statues, each carved with a distinct facial expression.

Arhats, the Awakened disciples of the Buddha, are regarded in East Asia as protectors of the Buddha’s teaching. Zenpō-ji, located near Tsuruoka in northeast Japan, has 531 unique arhat statues that were carved in the early 1850s.

The back of the mount bears a second photo of the Drum Bridge at Sumiyoshi in Osaka, suggesting this page was extracted from a tourist album of photographs. This hand-painted photo is attributed to Kusakabe Kimbei and dates to the 1890s; the photo of Zenpō-ji may also be a Kimbei print.

According to the temple, visitors are encouraged to look among the statues for one whose features resemble those of a deceased relative and to make offerings before it.

All 531 arhat statues were recently restored and repainted. For an informative introduction to Zenpō-ji and a behind-the-scenes look at the restoration process, see the temple’s video viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/4cefw6xp.

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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Nagoya Railroad’s Shūrakuen Daibutsu Postcard

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Decades before Godzilla, the 1934 “monster” film, The Great Buddha Arrival, featured a costumed actor as a giant Buddha roaming through a miniature city. The figure was based on the recently completed Shūrakuen Daibutsu, a colossal statue erected in 1927 near Nagoya.

The statue was not cast in traditional bronze, but was made of reinforced concrete, reflecting the growing preference for modern, durable construction materials. Businessman Yamada Saikichi originally built the 19 m (62 ft) statue to commemorate the marriage of Emperor Shōwa.

The Shūrakuen Daibutsu was also built during a period of expanding domestic tourism, soon becoming a regional attraction. Nagoya Railroad Co. issued this postcard in the late 1930s, a marketing strategy among railway companies seeking to stimulate interest in rail travel.

A pair of monumental guardian figures, like those traditionally found at the entrances to Buddhist temples, were also erected on the grounds. Because they were made of concrete rather than metal, these statues survived wartime metal requisition policies and still stand in the park today.

When completed, the Shūrakuen Daibutsu was the tallest colossal Buddha statue in Japan—four meters taller than the Nara Daibutsu—making it a natural choice to be brought to life on screen in The Great Buddha Arrival.

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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Puck Magazine’s Benjamin Butler as Joss Buddha Cover

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By the 1880s, Chinese American temples were sufficiently familiar to the public imagination to serve as an effective visual basis for political satire. Yet, however, the imagery was often not rooted in ethnographic realism; it remained a caricature of Western fantasy.

This 1884 cover of Puck depicts Gen. Benjamin Butler as a Chinese deity named “Ben Joss” receiving offerings from Charles Dana, the editor of the New York Sun, dressed in yellowface. Frederick Opper’s illustration draws attention to the effusive editorial praise Dana lavished upon Butler.

The lithograph portrays Butler as a cross-legged Buddha, but such figures were nearly non-existent in Chinese American temples of the era. In fact, the image portrays a “nodding” chinoiserie magot figurine, a European caricature of a Chinese Laughing Buddha, with bobbing hands and tongue.

Magots were popularized in Europe as grotesque and whimsical decorative figurines, made with mechanically balanced heads, tongues, and hands that moved. Opper’s illustrations adds a string-like mustache and pointy fingernails to Butler, racialized visual cues to identify the figure as Chinese.

Even as satire, such illustrations imply buddhas were commonplace in Chinese American temples, but this was not the case. Opper’s illustration is a pastiche of visual tropes – paper lanterns, dragon candle holders, and Buddha statues – to evoke a exoticized notion of Chinese religiosity.

To see a better representation of the kinds of icons enshrined in early Chinese American temples, see the online “Map of Temples in San Francisco’s Chinatown: 1850s-1906,” viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/ykyaas2d.

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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Chinese Idolatry Stock Advertising Card

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Victorian trade cards often employed the same visual language found in contemporary political cartoons. In the late 1870s and 1880s, as anti-Chinese xenophobia intensified in the US, depictions of the “heathen chinee” prostrating before Buddhist idols became more widespread.

This stock card was from an alphabet primer series, appealing to one of the primary audiences for trade cards, children. The letter “I” can be spotted on the pedestal in the rear, thus asking viewers to interpret the scenes through the lens of words beginning with “I.”

The moralizing tone of the images is apparent. In the foreground we see a child lying on the floor clutching a bottle, representing inebriation or intoxication.

The Chinese children in the background, clearly identified by their long queues and flowing garments, represent idolators practicing foreign idolatry.

The idol is a distorted version of a sitting buddha, portrayed with horns and performing a “Chinese dance.” For more on the visual language of trade cards, see Lenore Metrick-chen, “The Chinese of the American Imagination: 19th Century Trade Card Images” (2007).

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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