Yoshiko Kainuma: Studio Production in Mid-to-Late Heian Japan: Craftsmen or Artists?

USC Meiji University Exchange

The Records of the Meiji University-USC Exchange

Since 2008, scholars and graduate students from Meiji University and throughout Southern California have met annually to share research on Premodern Japanese History at the University of Southern California . This is an archive of abstracts, papers, and materials presented at the exchanges.

Friday 12/6/2013, 2:00-2:45 PM, Waite Phillips Hall 104*

Studio Production in Mid-to-Late Heian Japan: Craftsmen or Artists?
Dr. Yoshiko Kainuma, Associate, USC Project for Premodern Japan Studies

Buddhist sculptors in Nara and early Heian Japan were generally regarded as craftsmen or artisans, rather than as artists in the modern sense. Around the mid-Heian period however, some drastic changes in environment led to a rise in their social status and greater independence for them as Buddhist sculptors who could then assert their own aesthetic values in their works of art. In this talk I present a history of a brilliant epoch for the mid-to-late Heian sculptors who carved in wood.