Portrait of Wuzhun Shifan (Color on Silk)

One Scroll, National Treasure since 1952

Portrait of Wuzhun Shifan, Color on Silk (絹本著色無準師範像, Kenpon Chakushoku Bujun Shiban Zo) is a Southern Song painting owned by Tofukuji at Honmachi, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture, designated a National Treasure on 29 March 1952. The quantity is one scroll, the category painting, and the date Southern Song, 1238.

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

The commentary reads: a work of the Southern Song period. One sentence, as with the sixteen arhat scrolls and the Fugen Enmei image. Three such commentaries have now come in succession.

Two Scrolls Kept in One Box

An important statement about this work appears in a different record.

Tofukuji holds a second painting under the same title, made an Important Cultural Property on 17 August 2016. Its date is Southern Song, 1254, sixteen years later than this one.

The commentary on that record says: at Tofukuji it came down kept in the same wooden box as the National Treasure portrait of Wuzhun Shifan showing the full figure, and its importance in cultural history is highly valued.

Two scrolls in one box. This one shows the full figure; the other shows the sitter from the waist up. Two portraits of the same man in different compositions, handed down together.

None of this appears in the record for this scroll. Its one sentence gives the period and nothing else: no box, no companion. The information exists only on the other side.

Sixty-Four Years Between the Two Listings

The two scrolls have been treated very differently.

This one became a National Treasure in 1952; the other an Important Cultural Property in 2016. Sixty-four years lie between.

So does the detail of the record. This commentary runs to one sentence; the other gives dimensions of 116.0 centimetres by 50.4 centimetres, the mounting as a hanging scroll on a single width of painting silk, and the grounds for its date in an inscription above the image.

Even the classification differs: painting here, East Asian painting excluding Japanese painting there. Two scrolls of the same sitter at the same temple sit under different heads.

Two works from one box, differing in category, in year of listing and in how fully they are described. Listings are made object by object, and differences of this kind follow.

Correcting a Misread Name

The English name of this property had gone wrong.

It read Portrait of Shiromu Jun Shihan on Silk Book. The sitter's name reads Bujun Shiban in Japanese, and Shiromu Jun Shihan is a misreading of the characters.

On Silk Book is wrong as well. Color on silk means pigment worked on woven silk; no book is involved.

The name has been corrected to Portrait of Wuzhun Shifan, Color on Silk. The sitter was a Southern Song monk, and Wuzhun Shifan is the reading of his name in Chinese.

After the Five Great Wisdom Kings and the Fugen Enmei image, both wrongly given as statues, this is the third English name beginning with color on silk to be put right.

Seeing It

Tofukuji, in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto City, owns the scroll. These are temple holdings, not objects kept on permanent display.

Paintings are vulnerable to light and are usually shown only for short periods. They may appear in special exhibitions at museums, so watch for notice of a showing.

The two scrolls will not necessarily be shown together. They are separate properties, and decisions about lending them are made separately.

The Tofukuji gate carries its own designation as well. One temple holds several properties, each with its own record. Conditions of access can change, so check before travelling.