Scene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji Temple

Scene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji Temple

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jin’ōji Temple is associated with the ascetic hermit monk En no Gyōja. Legend has it that he ordered a shikigami (a local deity represented as a small ghost) to guide the Korean deity Hōshō Gongen (Korean: Boseung gwanhyeon) to Jin’ōji. Here, Hōshō Gongen appears as an armed guardian atop a pine tree, while one of the monk’s servant-demons kneels before him in adoration. This fragment originally belonged to a set of illustrated scrolls recounting the history of the temple. The set was cut into sections that have since been remounted as hanging scrolls and dispersed among collections in Japan and America.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji TempleScene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji TempleScene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji TempleScene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji TempleScene from The Illustrated Legends of Jin’ōji Temple

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.