Images Old and New: Buddhist Painting Preservation and the Transmission of Tradition in Premodern Japan

For the past two decades, scholarship has made great strides uncovering the multifaceted ways in which Buddhist objects provide insights into the beliefs, practices, and worldviews of the people who used and viewed them. Having moved past iconographic analysis as the sole lens with which to evaluate Buddhist art, scholars have demonstrated, for instance, how the religion’s visual and material culture served as conduits between the physical world and the intangible, and operated as nodes linking networks of people and places. This article adds another perspective to the study of Buddhist art objects by considering how their physical condition prompted new forms of engagement in religious practice in premodern Japan. In particular, it investigates differences between three ways to preserve images—to copy, to repair, and to re-create—and demonstrates that while both copying and repair kept objects in a good and presentable state, repair could additionally serve as a means for the production and diffusion of Buddhist cultural knowledge. Re-creation combines the practice of copy and repair and reveals how an object’s material properties, an aspect of any conservation effort, could also transmit information about associated miracles or numinous qualities.