The Material Imagination of a Japanese Tendai Welcoming Descent of Amida Embroidery

Sanskrit seed-syllables appear with startling frequency on Japanese images embroidered with human hair from the thirteenth century onward.These embroideries evoke one's somatic presence and yet also conflate and materially transform the body into sacred word.This paper disentangles the material fabrication and visual program of a fourteenth-century Welcoming Descent of Amida Triad hair embroidery from the Tokugawa Art Museum.In so doing, it seeks to reveal the myriad receptions of this textile that extend beyond Pure Land Buddhist devotion.Turning to the Ztansh written by the monk Muj Ichien, this paper illustrates how hair embroidery was considered a suitable medium for attaining Buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jbutsu ).It then argues that a variety of deathbed rites-chanting the nenbutsu, visualizing the Seed-Syllable A, reciting portions of the Lotus Stra and chanting the mantra of Fud my-could all be performed in front of this single embroidery.