The $14M Dollar Buddha Pt. 2
By DR. YOKO HSUEH SHIRAI
SPECIAL TO THE RAFU
Sunday, April 12, 2009

A key figure that authenticated this wooden sculpture is Yamamoto Tsutomu, a well-respected specialist of Japanese Buddhist statuary who was a curator at the prestigious Tokyo National Museum between 1981 and 2005. Without his involvement, this icon might still be collecting dust somewhere in an obscure location. Yamamoto’s initial interest in this Buddha may not have been sparked if he had not already written an extensive article on a separate and even smaller wooden
Vairocana, about 12 inches in height, known as the Kotokuji Dainichi housed at the Buddhist temple Kotokuji at Ashikaga city, Tochigi prefecture, and located about 50 miles north of Tokyo.

In a Tokyo National Museum publication issued in March 1988, Yamamoto attributed the Kotokuji Vairocana to Unkei’s studio and provided a manufacture date of some time between 1189 and 1196.

He acknowledged his debt to Shiono Keiko, a resident of Ashikaga city who wrote about the Kotokuji Vairocana in her undergraduate senior thesis. The quality of the icon’s workmanship and apparent references to it in local temple documents inspired her to contact local scholars, who then contacted Yamamoto Tsutomu in 1986 regarding the icon.

In his article on the Kotokuji Vairocana, Yamamoto offered up two things that would later prove critical in the case of the $14 million-dollar Buddha. First, when discussing the ancient documents stored at Bannaji, also located at Ashikaga city, he pointed out references to the foundation history of temple buildings where the Kotokuji Vairocana might have been installed between 1189 and 1199. Mentioned among these references was the manufacture of a completely gold-colored Vairocana about three shaku (roughly ninety centimeters) in height that was placed inside a small shrine; the shrine apparently had an inscription dating to the year 1193.

Yamamoto indicated that this reference pointed to a separate and much larger Vairocana than the
Kotokuji Vairocana. So a careful reader of the article would note that Yamamoto was aware of, or might even be hoping to discover, this missing three-shaku Vairocana.

The second important contribution by Yamamoto in the 1988 article was the inclusion of x-ray photographs taken of the Kotokuji Vairocana that revealed the shadowy outlines of the objects carefully placed inside the body cavity to animate, empower, and personalize the Buddha. Both the Kotokuji Vairocana and another confirmed Unkei sculpture dating to 1243 contained a spherical crystal ball, unlike the more usual boardlike or planar circle that functioned as a kind of “heart” for the image.

Another important distinction was the inclusion of a wooden gorinto or five-element pagoda, each tier representing earth, water, fire, wind, or space. The earliest recorded description of placing a five-element pagoda inside a Buddha occurred in the eighth month of 1185, and the Buddha was none other than the monumental Vairocana at Todaiji in Nara city, still one of the major stops for tourists visiting Kyoto and Nara (but the current Vairocana, known as Daibutsu, is not the same one dating to 1185). The practice of inserting a five-element pagoda inside an image seems to have started around the time that Unkei was active as a sculptor, and Yamamoto wondered if Unkei might have learned about this practice from the monk Chogen who supervised the rededication of the Todaiji Vairocana. Although Unkei was not the only sculptor to insert a five-element pagoda inside an image, Yamamoto claimed that most had emerged from the same artistic lineage or trained at the same school as Unkei, the Kei-school of sculptors.

Skipping ahead a decade or so, what happened in the year 2000 is not entirely clear and the most telling details appear in Christie’s lot description for the March 18, 2008 sale of Japanese and Korean art in New York. Under lot number 200, sale number 1978, and appearing at the end of the “Lot Notes,” the consigner of the 66.1 cm high Vairocana stated his belief that the icon came from a Buddhist temple [that was probably falling to ruin] during the Meiji period (1868-1911) and became the property of a “prominent family in the northern part of the Kanto region” which is the region that includes Ashikaga city. It was then acquired by a Buddhist art dealer of the same region, along with two other Buddhist sculptures (a standing figure of Jizo and a seated figure of Aizen Myoo). In 2000, the consigner was shown all three figures by the dealer and was told that he could buy only one of the three; he chose the Vairocana.

Now there is something fishy about this statement released by the consigner, especially because the first sentence of the “Lot Notes” informs us that this individual was a “private collector of Buddhist art who had the good fortune to stumble upon a Buddhist statue in a countryside antique shop.” Was this a privileged, transactional deal that was by invitation only, or was it just a collector’s dumb-luck that resulted in this purchase? It seems to have been the former, so the reason behind the contradictory statements in the same “Lot Notes” is quite baffling, unless there was a scheme to feed upon an art collector’s fantasy of discovering a work of art worth millions at a “countryside antique store” operated by ignorant bumpkins.

Another odd thing that strikes me about this transaction is, why was the buyer allowed to buy only one of the three images? And where are the other two? Since Unkei had sculpted multiple figures for two other temples in this general region near Tokyo during the late 1180s, it is quite possible that all three images came from the same temple. In other words, these other two images could also be from Unkei’s workshop, so where are they now, and why is it that no one seems to care about them?

Shortly after the auction took place, the consignor agreed to be interviewed by a journalist for the
Yomiuri Shinbun. In the article dated 20 March 2008, the man is described as being in his early forties and purchased the Vairocana using the salary he earned while working for a foreign firm (such firms can also include major investment banks in Tokyo, and we know how they compensate their employees).

He eventually felt the burden of owning this icon to be too heavy, and although he contacted the Bunkacho (the national Agency for Cultural Affairs) to try to negotiate a deal so that the icon could remain in Japan, they informed him they could not pay his asking price under current regulations. He believed that a buyer at auction would take better care of the icon than an ordinary person like himself, and after the sale, he felt relief that the Vairocana would be returning to Tokyo.

But now we are getting ahead of ourselves. Little else is known publicly about this collector, but he had evidently read Yamamoto Tsutomu’s article on the Kotokuji Vairocana because in 2003, he sent Yamamoto a letter requesting x-ray photographs to be taken of his newly acquired Vairocana because he suspected that it may have objects concealed inside the body like the Kotokuji Vairocana.
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The third installment will appear in next Thursday’s Arts & Entertainment section.