4 Skillful Means (upāya) of the Courtesan as Bodhisattva Fugen: Maruyama Ōkyo’s Lady Eguchi
In: Gender, Continuity, and the Shaping of Modernity in the Arts of East Asia, 16th–20th CenturiesSearch for other papers by Ikumi Kaminishi in
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Abstract
The 1794 painting of Eguchi no kimi (Lady Eguchi) by Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–95) depicts a beautiful woman on an elephant. This seemingly bizarre union was neither peculiar nor singular in its composition, nor was its conception original to Ōkyo. In addition to at least two other paintings of this subject matter by Ōkyo, nearly twenty paintings and woodblock prints of the same theme by other artists survive from Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868). The numbers make Eguchi no kimi one of the most popularly copied images in the era, and one of the most frequently repeated parody pictures. The imagery satirizes the Buddhist bodhisattva Fugen, whose iconographic mount is an elephant, by replacing the deity with a beautifully coiffed modern courtesan. Such a visual pun (mitate) was an artistic trope, popular in the Edo period. However, Ōkyo’s Eguchi no kimi departs from the trend. For him, the theme offered a challenge that combines a mundane and mortal woman’s images with a bodhisattva identity. His Eguchi, a sacred agent of entertainment who blurs the boundary between the divine and profane, demonstrates the Buddhist skillful-means teaching (upāya) through visualizing the ideas of delusion and, subsequently, of deterrent from corporeal desire.