When the Buddha Came to Nagoya: Immersive Reading in Kōriki Enkōan’s Illustrated Accounts of Traveling Temple Exhibitions

The illustrated books of Kōriki Enkōan (1756–1831), a samurai and amateur illustrator from Owari domain, offer a unique window into the culture of spectacle and display that flourished in late Edo-period Japan. Included in his corpus are several manuscripts that document kaichō, public exhibitions of sacred icons and temple treasures hosted by Buddhist temples and other venues. While most studies of kaichō emphasize their popularity in the capital of Edo, this article focuses on Enkōan’s illustrated manuscript of an exhibition of the famous Seiryōji Shaka that was held in Nagoya in 1819. Situating the event and its visual documentation within the statue’s legendary history as a traveling icon, the study explores how Enkōan’s careful manipulation of text and image created an immersive reading experience that allowed its readers a kind of virtual access to the exhibition. Considering the author’s position within the contemporary social hierarchy, it also addresses the role that samurai values may have played in shaping the representation of kaichō and illuminates its intersections with urban spectacle and emerging exhibition practices in early modern Japan.