古代の日本における阿弥陀浄土図の受容とその位相―法隆寺金堂壁画第六号壁と当麻曼荼羅をめぐる受容の本質とその言説の形成を中心に―=the Reception of Amitabha Pure Land Images in Ancient Japan and Its Phases: Focusing on the True Nature of the Reception of the Horyuji Kondo Wall Painting No. 6 and the Taima Mandala and the Formation of Related Discourse
The Hôryûji Kondô Wall Painting No. 6 and the Taima Mandala are two indispensable works in any discussion of Amitabha's Pure Land imagery in Japan during the 7th and 8th centuries. At first glance the iconography of these two works appears different, and indeed differences in their date of production can also be discerned. As a result, up until now scholars of Japanese Buddhist art history have naturally considered that the main stream of the art of the Pure Land faith in ancient Japan chronologically progressed from the type of iconography seen in the Hôryûji Kondô Wall Painting No. 6 to the type of iconography seen in the Taima Mandala. In this article the author questions this discourse and examines the true nature of the reception of Amitabha's Pure Land imagery in ancient Japan, using the Hôryûji Kondô Wall Painting No. 6 and the Taima Mandala as examples, along with the formation of related discourse. First the author explains the following images in these two works: namely, the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land and the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land based on the Amitayaradhyana Sutra in the Taima Mandala and the Amitabha Triad and Fifty Bodhisattvas in the Hôryûji Kondô Wall Painting No. 6. Next the author discusses the process by which the paradigm of progression from the Hôryûji Kondô Wall Painting No. 6 to the Taima Mandala in Japanese Pure Land imagery studies was transferred from the development of a paradigm in China of the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land that progressed from Tanluan-type to Shandao-type. Then, regarding the mechanism by which the paradigm of Pure Land art research was formulated, the auther discusses that while medieval Japanese Pure Land art was organized within the ideological paradigm of the medieval Pure Land faith, ancient Japanese Pure Land art was considered nothing more than examples of the art that existed before medieval Japanese Pure Land art, and that major examples from the different periods of antiquity were simply unified in such discussions as a mosaic-like array. The auther continues to analyze the development in China, reception in Japan and later development in both China and Japan of the the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land and images of the Amitabha Triad and Fifty Bodhisattvas through an examination of examples in Dunhuang, Sichuan, and Japan. These three sets of examples do not, by any means, reveal a uniform development. Regardless of the fact that the iconography of the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land and images of the Amitabha Triad and Fifty Bodhisattvas developed in parallel in China, there is a limited number of extant examples in Japan, one of the points of reception for the two iconographies. Furthermore, there were different developments later within China, with Dunhuang and Sichuan showing their own approaches to the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land and images of the Amitabha Triad and Fifty Bodhisattvas. At Dunhuang, the Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land became the main type of imagery, with images of the Amitabha Triad and Fifty Bodhisattvas being absent from 9th century and later images at the site. Conversely, examples began to appear in Sichuan that presented a fusion of Visual Aspects of Amitabha's Pure Land and images of the Amitabha Triad and Fifty Bodhisattvas. In Japan, medieval period Pure Land art developed differently from that in China. Through the above observations the author concluedes that there was not a linear chronological development in the main stream of ancient Japanese Pure Land art from the Hôryûji Kondô Wall Painting No. 6 type to the Taima Mandala type. In terms of this Amitabha's Pure Land iconography, while numerous different types coexisted in China, there are not necessarily synchronous extant examples of each of these types in Japan. This lack of evidence led to the mistaken direct linkage between the two major types and the resulting problems in the discourse surroundin
