Muroji: Rearranging Art and History at a Japanese Buddhist Temple is the first in-depth examination in English of the temple's art, architecture, and history. Relying on sensitive consideration of context along with traditional art historical modes of analysis, it offers a fuller understanding of a site of signal importance in the history of Japanese Buddhism. Its sophisticated blending of approaches will find an appreciative audience among art historians, historians, students of Japanese religion, and more broadly Buddhologists and others interested in the history of religion.
Concentrating on ritual context in conjunction with clear formal description of the sculpture and architecture, Fowler (Japanese art history, U. of Kansas) has written a fascinating study of the Buddhist temple of Muroji in Japan. Offerings of many thousand rice grain stupas (momito); rain-making ceremonies to the dragon of Mt. Muro; the importance of making donations to maintain the pagoda to ensure good rice harvest; Buddhist, Shinto, and ancient localized religious practice associated with Muroji; the architecture of the pagoda and temple; and the form and meaning of the extraordinary 9th and 10th- century (Heian) wooden sculptures that fill the temple are some of the threads she follows. The history is taken up to the present, with comments on shifts in pilgrim traditions and changing interpretations of the temple and its sculpture. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
