Sacred Treasures of Mount Koya: The Art of Japanese Shingon Buddhism

In 817 the great Buddhist monk Kôbô Daishi Kûkai selected Mount Kôya as the training center for Shingon Buddhism. Since then hundreds of works of religious art were collected and preserved at Mount Kôya, including treasures of Shingon Mikkyô itself and other forms of Buddhism, of Shintô, Shugen, and syncretic practice–each an expression of faith and many influential in the development of Japanese religious thought and culture. To commemorate the recent Kôyasan Shingon Mission of Hawaii Centennial Celebration, a hundred of these works were exhibited for the first time outside Japan at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the only venue for the exhibition in the United States.

In Sacred Treasures of Mount Kôya, color photographs and an explanation accompany each exhibit item. Dr. Willa Jane Tanabe (University of Hawai‘i) contributes an essay on the complexities of Shingon Buddhist art, which are organized under four basic themes, thus providing a framework by which many of the pieces can be viewed meaningfully.

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