Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2016

Immigrant Kinship Groups and the Making of the Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara

Dr. Chari Pradel
Professor of Art History, California State Polytechnic University Pomona

December 1, 2016
18:30-20:00
Room 301, Building 10, Sophia University

One of Japan’s most puzzling National Treasures is the assemblage of embroidered fragments known as
the Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara. Documentary evidence indicates that the fragments are the remains two
artifacts: a pair of shūchō (embroidered curtains) representing Tenjukoku (Land of Heavenly
Lifespan) made in the seventh century, and its thirteenth century restoration, called a mandara (Sk.
mandala). These documents also reveal that both artifacts were associated with Prince Shōtoku (574-
622), traditionally acknowledged as the father of Japanese Buddhism. For this reason, the assemblage
was categorized as an example of early Buddhist art.
By analyzing the scant visual evidence, this lecture will demonstrate that the subject represented
on the embroidered curtains was not Buddhist, but that included designs found in tombs and funerary
artifacts from China and Korea. The use of a common East Asian visual vocabulary might be related to
the fact that the designers and the supervisor of the seventh-century artifact were members of
important immigrant kinships groups that played a key role in the transmission of continental
culture.

Chari Pradel is a Professor in the Department of Art at California State Polytechnic University,
Pomona, where she has taught since 2004. Her publications focus on Japanese religious art,
especially works associated with Prince Shōtoku, such as “Shōkō Mandara and the Cult of Prince
Shōtoku in the Kamakura Period,” Artibus Asiae 68.2 (2008) and “Portrait of Prince Shōtoku and Two
Princes: From Devotional Painting to Imperial Object,” Artibus Asiae 74.1 (2014). Her book
Fabricating the Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara and Prince Shōtoku’s Afterlives (Leiden: Brill, 2016) will
be in the market soon. While an ICC Visiting Scholar, she is researching the Hasedera engi narrative
scrolls.

Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) Sophia University 7-1Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN +81-3-3238-4082 / +81-3-3238-4081(fax) / Email diricc@sophia.ac.jp / Web: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/