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The Lotus Sutra is, in many ways, the Buddhist Bible. This is particularly so in Japan, where, among the enormous number of scriptures and treatises that make up the Buddhist canon, the Lotus Sutra has been singled out as an object of espacially deep devotion and fervent practice. But the influence of this scripture in Japan transcended the realm of religion to permeate the culture on all levels. Tale collections, poetry, and popular songs have been based on the Lotus Sutra. It has also inspired marvelous works of art. The Lotus Sutra offers particularly promising material for painting, rich as the scripture is in parable and simile, in vivid images and reverberant symbols, and in unforgettable characters and events. This book is an in-depth survey of the several genres of pictorial art related to the Lotus Sutra. These are richly illustrated, in all their variety, in 46 full color and 126 monochrome plates : the austerely beautiful frontispiece paintings in gold and silver inks on paper dyed deep indigo ; the sutras inventively written si that the Chinese characters of each fascicle of the text form the image of a stupa ; passages of the scripture copied over lively secular scenes on paper for mounting as folding fans ; gorgeously colored frontispiece paintings sprinkled with gold and silver flakes that depict scenes from the sutra transposed into the elegant world of Japan's ancient aristocracy, or cleverly hint at the text's content with rebuslike characters hidden here and there in the picture ; the "transformations" of the text into cinematic montages in the form of large hanging scrolls ; and many other varieties of painting, masterful as art, ingenious as narrative. In addition to an analysis of the content, style, and import of each work, the author offers for the first time a comprehensive scheme for classifying the paintings, an important methodological step in their study as a whole. She also clarifies the relationship between rituals, associated with the Lotus Sutra - including memorial services, preemptive funerals, sutra burial, public lectures, and "etoki", or "explaining the pictures" - and the art created to decorate the text, placing the art in the larger context from which it sprung.

Mandala (Buddhism) --- Tripiṭaka. --- Criticism, interpretation, etc. --- Illustrations.