processions. Altar tables held ritual implements, in-
cense burners, water dishes, and other items of bronze,
gold, and silver. Monastic surplices, altar cloths, seat
cushions, and other sacred textiles were made from
donated women’s garments. Black lacquer with sprin-
kled gold patterns or precious inlays of silver or
mother-of-pearl, adorned tables, cabinets, and boxes
for storing objects, clothing, and sacred texts. Large
ceremonies and theatrical performances required mu-
sical instruments, masks, and costumes.
Because many temples also served as the private
retreats for elite patrons, especially noblemen and
women who themselves became monks and nuns,
many paintings, manuscripts, textiles, lacquerware
and other objects housed in temple storehouses can-
not properly be characterized as “Buddhist art” even
though they were perceived as “temple treasures.”
The lower levels of society also participated in the
material cultures of Buddhism, especially during the six-
teenth and later centuries when a rise in quasi-religious
travel by commoners created precursors of contempo-
rary tourism. Temple icons, both carved and painted,
were put on periodic display during temple airings and
were sometimes sent outside temple precincts for
fund-raising purposes. Devotional objects made ex-
pressly for purchase by visitors include printed Bud-
dha images and sutras, AMULETS AND TALISMANS, and
painted wooden plaques (ema) upon which prayers to
specific deities are written. Pilgrims often left paper
“calling cards” on temple gates, they piled up stones
in the form of a STUPA, and deposited small carved
Buddha images in the rafters of temple halls. In addi-
tion to PILGRIMAGE, temples also established vast fu-
nerary precincts that have become extraordinary stone
graveyards, most notably near the tombs of Prince
Shotoku, KUKAI, Honen, and other holy figures. While
such material manifestations of Buddhist practice are
not usually termed art,they are nonetheless a contin-
uing feature of the visual culture of Buddhist practice
in Japan today.
See also:Chan Art; China, Buddhist Art in; Hells, Im-
ages of; Honji Suijaku; Horyuji and Todaiji; Huayan
Art; Phoenix Hall (at the Byodoin); Pure Land Art
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gional Politics in Twelfth-Century Japan.Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998.KARENL. BROCKJAPANESE, BUDDHIST INFLUENCES ON
VERNACULAR LITERATURE INJapanese secular literature is grounded in ways of feel-
ing, thinking, and behaving that developed centuries
before they were defined by the classifications used to-
day: Shinto(Way of the Gods), the national memory
of ancient myths and rituals; Buddhism, a religion
teaching spiritual enlightenment, which originated in
India circa 500 B.C.E. and spread to Japan through
China by the middle of the sixth century C.E.; and Con-
fucian social philosophy, which trickled into Japan
from China and was selectively adapted to the coun-
try’s needs.It is equally important to stress that Western atti-
tudes concerning proper feeling, thinking, and
behavior—through the Christian missions circa 1549–
1630, eighteenth-century Enlightenment notions of
democracy, Marxism, and such—have left their markJAPANESE, BUDDHISTINFLUENCES ONVERNACULARLITERATURE IN