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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 15, 2008
Review of Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan
Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan. By Ikumi Kaminishi. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 246 pages, ISBN 0824826973, US $52.00 (cloth).
Ikumi Kaminishi’s Explaining Pictures explores the Japanese practice of etoki; a term that simultaneously refers to the process of explicating religious visual aids, the visual aids themselves, and the monks and nuns who explained (and continue to explain) them for potential converts and patrons. Her scope spans from the tenth century to the present, and connects seemingly disparate images by virtue of their Pure Land associations. For example, she first links the wall paintings of Shōtoku Taishi at Horyūji and Shitennōji to the Ōtani family (long-time leaders of the True Pure Land sect) even before the publication of Kenneth Lee’s The Prince and the Monk: Shōtoku Worship in Shinran’s Buddhism (SUNY, 2007). Kaminishi subsequently goes on to discuss the Taima, Kumano and Tateyama mandalas, and demonstrates how these representations of sacred geography aided both practitioners and patrons to visualize and graft ideals of the Pure Land onto local pilgrimage destinations in Japan. Her ambitious study thus highlights the long-overlooked role that etoki art, artists, and itinerant clerics had on the propagation of the Pure Land faith, and demonstrates the religio-historical significance of using narrative and didactic religious imagery for proselytizing and fundraising effect.
