Fuji mandara　富士曼荼羅

KEY WORD :　art history / iconography

Devotional paintings of Mt. Fuji 富士 in a large hanging scroll format. Usually they are in the form of　sankei mandara 参詣曼荼羅, which show pilgrims's activities at shrines and temples in the mountain landscape. Fuji mandara show the mountain dominating the painting space. At the bottom of the painting is Miho no Matsubara 三保の松原, the spit of land that stretches across the Suruga 駿河 Bay with pilgrims arriving by boat. Various rituals performed at the foot of the mountain are shown, as is the pilgrims's ascent to the peak. From the 14c Mt. Fuji often was shown as having three peaks, as were other sacred mountains in devotional art. Some paintings show a deity on each peak. The mountain's main shrine, Asama Jinja 浅間神社 (more commonly pronounced Sengen Jinja) was founded in the early 9c at Fuji-no-miya 富士宮, Shizuoka prefecture and dedicated to a Shinto God named Konohana sakuya hime 木花咲耶姫. However, the names of the shrine and the deity are conflated as is usual in Buddhism: thus it was called Asama Daibosatsu 浅間大菩薩 (also read as Sengen Daibosatsu, which can in turn be written 仙元大菩薩), Asama Daimyoujin 浅間大明神, and Fuji Gongen 富士権現. By late 9c, some pilgrims practiced asceticism on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, and in the mid 12c a chapel to *Dainichi 大日 was built on the summit by the founder of the mountain's shugendou 修験道 (the ascetic religious order). Dainichi's successors flourished and the mountain became a center of popular pilgrimage in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. In the Edo period, the Fuji cult was further stimulated by the practice of Kakugyou 角行 (1541-1646) and Jikigyou 食行 (1671-1733), priests who considered the mountain a source of peace and prosperity and who taught a simple, popular faith. Devotional Fuji confraternities Fujikou 富士講 also spread to Edo and to surrounding provinces, where many believed the mountain would become the paradise of the future Buddha *Miroku 弥勒, who in turm would create an age of prosperity and justice. Fuji mandara were used for the diffusion of the Fuji cult, showing the area as a destination for religious pilgrimage, as well as a memento of the famous spot. Extant examples date from the late Muromachi period.

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