Description

Red temple seals and vigorous brush strokes crowd close together over the entire surface, from whose center the powerful invocation Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu runs down vertically. Each individual seal and each inscription comes from a different station, so that over time the surface has woven itself into a dense, lively web of red and black.

Such Nōkyōjiku accompany pilgrims on the great Kannon pilgrimages of Japan. At each temple an entry is added to the scroll: the name of the temple in calligraphic script, together with the temple's red stamp. At the end of the journey, the scroll preserves not merely a collection of beautiful seals, but the complete route of a completed pilgrimage.

Executed on silk and mounted in a gold-shot brocade frame with metal jikusaki, this piece is far more than a decorative hanging scroll. It is a personal document of lived devotion and an unusually evocative testimony to Japanese pilgrimage culture, one that unfolds its full effect in a tokonoma or on a quiet wall.