Wall and Door Paintings of the Central Hall of the Phoenix Hall (Color on Wood Panel)

Fourteen Painted Surfaces, National Treasure since 1972

Phoenix Hall Central Hall Wall and Door Paintings (鳳凰堂中堂壁扉画, Hoodo Chudo Hekihiga), in color on wood panel, are owned by Byodoin at Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture, and were designated a National Treasure on 30 May 1972. The quantity is fourteen surfaces, the category painting, the date 1053.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs leaves the field for designation as an Important Cultural Property blank, so the work went to National Treasure without that earlier step, the eighth such case among the properties covered here.

The commentary is full. Besides the circumstances of making, the subjects, the manner and the assessment, it states the reason for the listing itself. The date of listing, 1972, seems to answer to that fullness.

The Record Uses the Term Double Designation

An unusual sentence stands in the Agency's account.

The hall is already designated a National Treasure as a structure, but in view of the importance of these paintings the present listing makes it a double designation.

The Phoenix Hall is designated as a building. The paintings on its walls and doors have now been designated separately, as painting. The Agency calls this a double designation.

One thing is listed under two heads: once as a building, once as the pictures inside it.

The reason is stated as well: in view of the importance of these paintings. Though the hall was already protected as a structure, a judgment was made to list the pictures again in their own right.

The wall paintings in the Daigoji pagoda stand inside a building that is likewise designated as a structure, but that record does not use the term. This one puts the relation into words.

The Same Year as the Building

The time of making is recorded too.

The Phoenix Hall was completed by Fujiwara no Yorimichi in the third month of 1053 and dedicated with great ceremony. The paintings carry the same date, 1053.

Building and painting share a year, the same relation as at the Daigoji pagoda, where the paintings were finished with the pagoda itself.

Of the painter the record says that the work appears to have been by leading artists of the day. Appears to have been: an inference, and no name is given.

The Agency fixes the year of making while leaving the hand that made it as a supposition.

The Welcoming Descent within a Yamato-e Landscape

The subjects are named precisely.

Following the text of the Contemplation Sutra, the paintings show the welcoming descent in its nine grades and the meditation on the setting sun, among others. The subjects are drawn from scripture.

Of the treatment the Agency writes that in every case the coming of the holy company is finely rendered within a yamato-e landscape.

Figures appear within a landscape rather than against a separate ground: subject and setting belong to one picture.

The assessment reads: precious as one of the outstanding paintings of the Heian period. Accounts elsewhere call this the oldest surviving image of the nine-grade descent in Japan, but the Agency's record contains no comparison of dates.

Visiting

Byodoin, at Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture, owns the paintings. They are inside the Phoenix Hall, so they are seen in the course of visiting the interior.

Numbers and times for the interior may be limited. Check the temple's information for the conditions before travelling.

Related entries list the gilt bronze phoenixes from the old ridge ornament of the hall and a painted image of Prince Shotoku from another hall. One temple holds several properties, each with its own record.

The count of fourteen surfaces answers to the walls and doors that carry painting. As with the eighteen surfaces at the Daigoji pagoda, when pictures are painted onto part of a building the quantity is counted in faces.