Cover image for A chameleonic icon :  questioning the underground Christian identity of an Edoperiod Amida sculpture in the Nyoirin Kannon-do, Kawaguchi City.
A chameleonic icon : questioning the underground Christian identity of an Edoperiod Amida sculpture in the Nyoirin Kannon-do, Kawaguchi City.
Title:
A chameleonic icon : questioning the underground Christian identity of an Edoperiod Amida sculpture in the Nyoirin Kannon-do, Kawaguchi City.
Author:
Smith, Rachel Whitley.
ISBN:
9781339976341
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2016
Physical Description:
1 online resource (82 p.)
General Note:
Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 55-05.
Adviser: Akiko Walley.
Abstract:
In 1956, a statuette of a female deity and crucifix were discovered inside of a seventeenth-century Amida Buddha statue enshrined in the Nyoirin Kannon-do, Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan ("Kawaguchi Amida"). This thesis problematizes the methodology currently employed in the study of Japanese Christian-related objects. Thus far, research on the Kawaguchi Amida has considered it exclusively as a rare Christian artifact, connecting it to a local woman who escaped the 1623 martyrdom in Edo. No studies have yet focused on its role within a Buddhist context. This thesis first of all identifies the female statuette---presently attributed as a "Maria Kannon"---as Kishimojin. It then examines the nested configuration of the Kawaguchi Amida, including the votive shrine that contained it and the caches found inside, through preceding Japanese Buddhist sculptural practices, providing a more nuanced analysis of its identities as a variegated Underground Christian and Buddhist statue.
Local Note:
School code: 0171.
Electronic Access:
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Added Corporate Author:
Thesis Note:
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Oregon, 2016.
Field 805:
npmlib ysh
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