Sacred Name of Tenjin
Medium
hanging scroll; ink on paper
Dimensions
105.4 × 18.4 cm
Classification
Calligraphy
Department
Japanese Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift from the Collection of George Gund III
Accession Number
2015.508
Tags
male
About this artwork
The story emerged in the early 1300s that the kami Tenjin had traveled to China and achieved enlightenment under a famous Buddhist meditation master. Paintings of the subject as well as written invocations of Tenjin’s name were highly valued by the monks of Japan’s Zen Buddhist communities, to which an invocation of Tenjin’s name brushed by Zen monk Sakugen Shūryō attests. Sakugen was both a poet and an official envoy to Ming China in the 1500s. Creating calligraphies of deities’ names was akin ...