Guanyin

Arnoldus Montanus’ Icon with Thirty Arms Engraving

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Following a pair of successful illustrated works on China, publisher Jacob van Meurs secured the rights to issue an illustrated book on Japan in 1669. The engravings, such as we see with the curious Buddhist icon here, were criticized for departing “a long way from the truth.”

Compiled by Arnoldus Montanus, a Protestant Minister who never left Holland, the engravings in Atlas Japannensis draw from both textual descriptions and an older European visual language of Asian idolatry. The work includes 23 large plates and 71 smaller vignettes set within the text.

As for the icon here, the English translation of 1670 reads, “This Image hath thirty Arms, and as many Hands, in each two Arrows, a Face representing a handsome Youth, on his Breast seven humane Faces, with a Crown of Gold, richly inchas’d with Peals, Diamonds, and all sorts of Precious Gems.”

While multi-armed and multi-headed figures are not uncommon in Buddhism, the particular configuration here appears rather fanciful. Nevertheless, we are informed the illustration here represents the Bodhisattva Kannon, further curiously identified in the text as the son of Amida Buddha.

The markings on the pedestal are meant to signify non-alphabetic East Asian writing, but none can be resolved into legible characters.

Kannon’s temple is said to be located on a Buddhist mountain just east of Kyoto, most likely pointing to Mt. Hiei. The fires indicate part of Mt. Hiei’s history, as described by Montanus, when Oda Nobunaga razed Buddhist temples in the region in 1571.

Several of Montanus’ engravings were copied into later works on Japan, helping shape a visual lexicon for Buddhism into the 19th cent. The 1669 Dutch edition of Atlas Japannensis has been digitized by the National Library of the Netherlands, viewable here: tinyurl.com/5n6kstfy.

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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T. Enami’s Sanjūsangen-dō Lantern Slide

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Before nickelodeons and cinema halls, “magic lantern” shows were an important part of popular American entertainment. Hand tinted glass slides were used by children’s story tellers, stage magicians, and traveling public lecturers in town and cities across the United States.

Enami Nobukuni, known professionally as T. Enami, opened his Yokohama photography studio in 1892 and by 1915 offered a very large glass slide portfolio. Objects such as this would have been sold as visual aids for public presentations or parlor room entertainment.

This slide shows a grouping of the famous one thousand Kannon statues of Sanjūsangendō in Kyoto, one of the most commonly photographed tourist sites in Japan during the late Meiji and Victorian periods.

Enami was celebrated for the beautiful hand tinting of his slides, but the coloring here suggests this slide was produced after his death in 1929, when his son took over the business and did not have an eye for finer detail like his father.

Enami was Japan’s most prolific producer of small format photographs and was often showcased in National Geographic Magazine. To view a selection of Enami’s photographs, see the digitized collection of Kjeld Duits, viewable here: tinyurl.com/245skpf8.

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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Guanyin Icon in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

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Fu Manchu’s opulent Gobi Desert lair seen in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) was assembled by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons. While the Art Deco inspired torture chambers remain horror classics, Gibbons’ strategic use of Buddhist statuary also hint to the audience impending danger.

Boris Karloff portrayed the villainous doctor Fu Manchu, here sitting on a throne introducing his daughter Fah Lo See (Myrna Loy). This scene unfolds under the eyes of a shadowy Buddhist figure perched atop the throne; close inspection reveals this to be in the style of a Guanyin statue.

Many props Gibbons used were made at the studio, including some of the Buddhist statues seen on screen. The idiosyncratic elements, including the multi-rayed halo, suggested this statue was pieced together by set designers; it was seen previously in Daughter of the Dragon (1931).

Curiously, the ornate backrest of the throne makes it appear as if Fu Manchu himself is a statue encircled by a halo. Like a menacing statue come to life, the audience can surmise the visitor will suffer at the hands of the villain.

Fu Manchu played on the racist fears of the Yellow Peril; in film, these fears could also be signified by Buddhist imagery. For further discussion of the dueling positive and negative views of China in American 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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Kamakura Sightseeing Map (1912)

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After the opening Japan in 1859, the old backwater capital of Kamakura was transformed into an international tourist destination. This bilingual tourist map from 1912 (Meiji 45) provides a glimpse into which Kamakura sites were seen as most significant, including the Kamakura Daibutsu.

The Complete Map of Kamakura Famous Places for Sightseeing (Kamakura yūran meisho zenzu 鎌倉遊覧名所全圖), loosely rendered into English as The Drawing of Kamakura Nipoon [sic], came inside a paper folder printed with symbols of the Japanese empire. The map was prepared by Kawakami Yasujirō 川上安次郎.

By the early 1890s, the Kamakura Kaihin Hotel, a converted medical therapy facility for seawater bathing, emerged as the premier resort for Kamakura travelers. In March 1893, the Japanese Welcome Society was established to help promote foreign travel in Japan.

For many Japanese travelers, the main attraction was the Hachiman Shrine, a large complex in the heart of the city found at the end of a long central promenade leading to the ocean. The red dot seen here suggests this site was highlighted by the original owners of the map.

Among the many dozens of sites named on the map, only a handful are marked by a red dot. Of those highlighted is Hase-dera, temple home to a famous 31-foot tall Eleven-Headed Kannon statue.

Another highlighted tourist attraction is the Kamakura Daibutsu at Kōtoku-in, here depicted by a small, yet easily identifiable, icon. For a digitized collection of Japanese maps held by the C. V. Starr East Asian Library at UC Berkeley, see tinyurl.com/yutj576z.

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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Ruth St. Denis as Guanyin Tri-Fold Brochure

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Ruth St. Denis, a pioneer of American modern dance, was among many performers interested in translating the static aesthetic of Greek statuary into motion. St. Denis set herself apart from her contemporaries by focusing on icons of the East, including the Chinese Buddhist goddess Guanyin.

This tri-fold brochure was made for the highly successful 1922–1925 tour under the prestigious impresario Daniel Mayer. St. Denis created her solo “Kuan yin” performance in 1919 using a chiffon robes and a crown to imitate the iconography of Guanyin.

St. Denis toured with her partner, Ted Shawn, who together created the Denishawn School of dance in 1915. The troupe performed both solo and large spectacle pieces and appeared in D. W. Griffith’s 1916 film, Intolerance.

During the Mayer tour, St. Denis performed the “Kuan Yin” piece as the opening act, considering it an “invocation.” The performance involved decorative poses using rhythmic manipulations of drapery and sculptural positioning of her hands, arms, and legs.

After touring Asia in 1926, St. Denis reused her Guanyin guise in a new act named “White Jade.” For further exploration, see Jon Soriano’s “Ruth St. Denis as Bodhisattva: An Art Historical Perspective on the Appropriation of Buddhist Imagery” in Water Moon Reflections (2021).

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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Albumen Photograph of Sanjūsangen-dō Kannon

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For visitors to Japan in the 1860s, Kyoto was seen as brimming with dangerous anti-foreign samurai. This changed in the 1870s when it was transformed by tourism, driven in part by foreign photography studios who were allowed to shoot the city for the 1872 Kyoto Exposition.

While Europeans knew of Kyoto’s Sanjūsangen-dō through late 17th century book engravings, the first photographs of the temple likely did not circulate until the early 1870s. This albumen print is by an unknown commercial photographer and likely dates to the 1880s.

The central icon is a Thousand-armed Kannon from the 13th century and is recognized as a National Treasure of Japan.

There appears to be a double exposure in this photograph, with a priest kneeling in front of the icon. The colorist gave the priest’s robes a wash of blue, but the paint did not cover over the woodwork designs of the altar.

Baron von Stillfried was among the foreign studio owners who photographed Kyoto in 1872. One of his albums, with views of Kyoto, can be seen through the Metropolitan Museum of Art here: https://tinyurl.com/yuuf52u9.

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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