Nara is an amazing magical place it was
the capital of Japan in the 8th century
so we have an unbroken tradition of some
1,400 years and Nara is dotted with
amazing ancient temples and shrines full
of treasures
so Nara was the capital from 7-10 to 784
a.d so less than a century but in many
ways it is the cradle of much of
traditional japanese civilization
particularly its religious culture the
great institutions the temples and
shrines founded in the eighth century
mark the early consolidation of the
Buddhist religion in Japan Buddhism
arrived in Japan from China and Korea in
the 6th century the king of korea sent
an image of a buddha probably a gilt
bronze small statue to the emperor of
japan and this is symbolically the
beginnings of the imperial house in
japan adopting the buddhist religion to
bolster their own political position and
to unify the nation but there were
pre-existing beliefs of course in japan
before buddhism arrived belief in the
spirits of nature and of ancestors which
are called the kami in japanese we now
call it the Shinto religion and one of
the amazing things about Japan is
although there was some trouble at the
beginning rivalry between those who
supported the traditional Japanese
beliefs and the newly-arrived Buddhism
although it was a bit of rivalry at the
beginning fairly quickly
they found a peaceable way of coexisting
so although some of the great temples
and shrines have been damaged by fires
during civil wars at the end of the 12th
century and again at the end of the 16th
century each time Nara has risen again
out of the ashes and it's still very
much a thriving living center
particularly of the Buddhist religion
Nara Prefecture is very generously
lending 15 religious treasures from the
great temples and shrines of Nara and
the National Museum there to the British
Museum for a temporary special display
and they date from the ad 600 s through
the 1300s we are introducing into the
displays some amazing Nara paintings
from the collection of the British
Museum this is probably the most
important Japanese Buddhist painting in
the collection of the British Museum the
central deity is known in japanese as
fuku can suckle monk and that means the
Bodhisattva of compassion with the never
empty noose this is an esoteric form of
the deity with four arms and three heads
and if you look carefully you can see in
one of the hands is this noose a kind of
glass in which the dirty uses to snare
the attention of the faithful
Bodhisattva of compassion is seated on a
lotus throne on top of a rocky outcrop
and is guarded by these two guardian
figures we are sure that this painting
is closely associated with Nara probably
with todaiji temple the Great Eastern
temple because one of the two guardian
figures in this rare iconography this is
a copy of a surviving clay sculpture
from the eighth century which is a
national treasure at todaiji temple the
painting dates from around the Year 1200
which is an important date in the
history of Nara in 1180 much of the city
was destroyed by the Taira troops in the
Civil War and so the period from 1180 to
1200 is a period of great revival great
rebuilding and so was a sense in which
the painter of this hanging scroll was
looking to the ancient sculptures of the
8th century in nara as a source of
inspiration
this painting is of a type known as a
castle a shrine mandala and it takes us
into one of the great religious sites on
the northeast corner of the city of Nara
the painting dates from the 1400s and in
that period the weave of Japanese
paintings is often quite open
unfortunately this means that in the
paintings have a tendency to flake and
some of the pigment here has fallen off
and it's perhaps obscured some of the
details but in essence we still have all
of the original composition and in fact
the landscape at the top of the painting
is mount Mikasa this rounded mountain in
the center and then the mountains kacica
mountains behind spreading out on the
foothills of mount Mikasa are the shrine
buildings of the Cusco shrine and in
particular we should focus on four
little trial shrine buildings side by
side in the central compound and you'll
notice also in the sky there are these
five Buddhas hovering in Randall's in
Japan in this period there's a very
interesting combination of Buddhism and
native Shinto where the Shinto deities
are regarded as emanations or avatars or
protectors of the Buddhist deities and
before Buddhist earth he's hovering here
in the sky
Iwata called the hanji boots of the
original Buddhas
associated with these four shinto
shrines the fifth one is associated with
a Wacka mere shrine off to the right and
because of the close association between
Buddhism and Shinto in this period this
painting has the Kasbah shrine at the
top and the Buddhist deities of corkage
temple at the bottom so the painting
itself is a kind of manifestation of the
closeness of Buddhism and Shinto in this
period
none of the treasures that are being
loaned from Nara have ever been seen in
the UK before and the Nara paintings
that we have in the British Museum can
only occasionally be shown because
they're obviously very ancient but also
very light-sensitive and we have to be
careful to limit the amount of exposure
to the light it's just extremely
gratified
to be able to unite them with some of
the wonderful sculptures and religious
objects that Nara Prefecture are lending
on this occasion it really is a unique
opportunity to see the paintings
together with the sculptures and ritual
objects from their original context and
comparing the two we learn a great deal
of new information