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24
ArtistJapanese, 1685–1768

The God of Medicine

18th century
Hanging scroll; ink on paper
Overall: 40 15/16 × 16 13/16 in. (104 × 42.7 cm)
EX.2023.NW.047

“Understanding grasses to use as medicine; cutting trees in order to plow; teaching how to cook using fire; teaching the benefits of strange beasts—A virtuous man of great scholarship and healing.”1

Once again, Hakuin has reached outside the traditional pantheon of Buddhism for a subject that would have been familiar and popular with laypeople: the medicine god Shinnō, who originated in China but was incorporated into the Japanese Shinto religion. He is often depicted as he is here, in a robe made of grasses with leopard-skin sleeves and carrying a staff. The small horns that sprout from his head are a standard part of his iconography and indicate that the wise man is a chimera of a human and a goat or an ox.

 

—Bradley Bailey

Notes

1 Stephen Addiss and Audrey Yoshiko Seo, The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin (Boulder: Shambhala, 2010), 179.