Besides dealing with objects and images, the art historian inevitably works also with stories. Some are “the facts” that place a piece of art within a context; some are the myths and legends that surround the art: stories about creation and origin or artistic intention and imagination, as well as stories about the history of a work, its influence and importance (or lack of such) over time. Clearly the stories about a work can be important; yet the dangers in selecting and interpreting these are numerous. Moreover, in a field like art history, in which coffee-table volumes and “general interest” works find a ready audience, stories—blindly accepted and occasionally amplified—can easily be pushed to the fore. In his study of the art of the Japanese Zen monastery Daitokuji, Gregory Levine makes it clear that he is a firm believer in stories, as long as they are understood as such and considered critically. The problem, as he sees it, is that Daitokuji’s art history has long been dominated by one set of stories, whose authors have been enamored by the “romance of antiquity” and a narrow canon of “great” works, while limiting themselves to questions of “provenance, formal analysis, and biography.” In the process, other stories, other “visual cultures” surrounding Daitokuji, have been blocked out or suppressed, and thus our understanding has been greatly limited. Levine’s intention is to open up the history of Daitokuji’s art, breaking down the walls of earlier interpretations to reveal a world that was and is dynamic, fluid, many-faceted, and at times fabricated.

Daitokuji consists of four parts, eleven chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. The book lacks thematic coherence, which is not surprising given the author’s intention of presenting several of the numerous “visual cultures” associated with Daitokuji. Just as Levine is not limited by theme, neither is he limited by time; his subjects extend from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. One result is that the historical context behind the visual cultures changes along with Levine’s focus, and the amount of space he is able to give to that context is of necessity limited. The strength of the book lies not in what it provides to the scholar of a given era of Japan but to the view it presents of a significant religious institution’s world of art over time.

Part 1 addresses the question of portraiture at Daitokuji, and includes both paintings and statues in its analysis. Among the famous painted portraits associated with Daitokuji are those of its founding abbot, Daitô (1282–1337), and its forty-seventh abbot, Ikkyû (1394–1481). Along with a handful of other abbots’ portraits, these have been widely circulated and reproduced in print. And yet they are hardly the bulk of what has been produced. Levine estimates that the present Daitokuji collection contains perhaps four hundred to five hundred portraits, with many more held in branch temples and private collections. And though later portraits have been routinely dismissed as formalistic and insipid, such characterizations ignore the role that many portraits played in the religious lives and religious culture of Daitokuji’s monks and lay adherents.

Whereas many previous analyses of abbot portraits have stressed the “facial naturalism” or “Zen spirit” to be found in the monks’ gazes, one of Levine’s most compelling sections addresses the contradictions in the very act of Zen portraiture. As an example, he puts forth Takuan Sôhô, an early seventeenth-century abbot who decided in his last instructions to prohibit his followers from displaying a formal portrait of him. Instead he asked that they merely set out “a calligraphic circle (ensô)” in place of his portrait. In 1645, Takuan had two circles painted on silk sheets, to which he added his mark—a simple brush stroke in the center. Takuan had apparently come to realize that his “return to Emptiness” meant a rejection of the self, which allowed for no separate and distinguishable identity. Nonetheless, after Takuan’s death his prescriptions against memorial portraits and services were largely ignored by disciples, who were more interested in following long-held traditions than in adhering to a precept that was doctrinally logical.

A significant part of this section consists of Levine’s discussion of the “founder’s statue” at the Kôrin’in sub-temple. Like hundreds of others within Daitokuji’s collection of images, this statue had gone unstudied before Levine’s work. What he and the present abbot of Kôrin’in discovered is that this statue, as seen in an inscription within the hollowed interior of the head (which can, like most wooden statues of this type, be removed from the body), was apparently not the image of the Kôrin’in abbot but that of a different abbot, of a different sub-temple. It appears that the statue was a likeness of the founding abbot of Baigan’an, a Daitokuji sub-temple established in the mid-seventeenth century. Tracing the history of Kôrin’in and Baigan’an, Levine concludes that the statue in all likelihood took on its changed representation in the 1870s. Under severe attack during these years for its foreign origins, Buddhism suffered heavy losses of land, wealth, and patronage. By the time the assault ended, Daitokuji had lost half of its sub-temples, one of which was Baigan’an. Sometime thereafter the Baigan’an founder’s statue took on a new life as the image of Kôrin’in’s founder. In the process of examining this shift, Levine discusses a range of topics, including the frailty of likeness, the movement of religious icons, and the enshrinement of icons. Thus in his examination of one seemingly insignificant statue, Levine reveals that there is a rich unexamined world beyond the old boundaries of Daitokuji’s art history.

In part 2 Levine’s subject is the main gate, or Sanmon, of Daitokuji. Here he examines the role played by tea master Sen Rikyû in its construction, as well as the subsequent suicide of Rikyû after his statue was installed within the gate. For me the most compelling sections are those that discuss the gate’s history and second-story artwork, which includes statues of Shaka and attendants, as well as sixteen rakan, or “worthy ones.”

Part 3 deals with calligraphy, in particular the “connoisseurship journal” Bokuseki no utsushi that Daitokuji abbot Kôgetsu Sôgan kept from 1611 to 1643. During these years Kôgetsu steadily copied, and commented on, a wide range of calligraphy. The largest percentage were from the Chan/Zen tradition, produced at the time for their calligraphic value, but others originated in more mundane fashion: as dharma lectures, religious sermons, administrative notes, memorials, religious verses, Chinese poems, Japanese poems, colophons, and seals. Kôgetsu’s intention was not to single out exceptional pieces to copy; he copied apparently whatever he found of interest, freely critiquing those he thought highly of and those he did not.

From this discussion, Levine moves to one on artistic fakes, a common problem during this same era, when fine calligraphy was highly prized and heavily paid for. Famous works, such as those by monks like Ikkyû, could bring staggering prices, a situation that naturally led to forgeries. Among those caught in such activities was the Daitokuji abbot Shôgaku, who in 1617 was at the center of a scandal over the creation and sale of a forged calligraphy of Daitokuji’s founder, Daitô. Of course, as Levine points out, over time some fakes became sacred works of importance, a fact that forces us to admit that the “legitimacy” of a piece can be defined in more than one way.

In part 4 Levine examines Daitokuji’s annual airing of calligraphy and art, a regular practice stretching back at least four centuries. Meant to dry out the works and the bugs that can damage them, airings (which are open to the public) have also offered connoisseurs and scholars the chance to see works otherwise rarely exhibited. Their popularity is attested to by their appearance in early modern guidebooks of the capital, such as Akisato Ritô’s Miyako rinsen meishô zue (1799), and in the crowds that flock to them today. As Levine makes clear, the airings at Daitokuji are a significant part of the monastery’s history of exhibitions.

Considered broadly, Daitokuji is a large and ambitious book. The research is sound, and there is much of interest. Moreover, the book is replete with photographs, over half of which are color plates. In itself this makes the volume valuable. As for Levine’s arguments, they are difficult to sum up, since the book is diverse by design. In a certain sense, the book can be considered a collection of essays on the arts of Daitokuji, each of which attempts to reject past approaches and prejudices and to open up new avenues to understanding. Like any collection of essays, especially those that range broadly, some are more convincing than others; and while most of Levine’s assertions about previous scholarship are valid, I found them to be excessive in length, especially in the early sections of the book. On the other hand, quite a number of Levine’s probes into Daitokuji’s art history are enlightening and compelling, making this a volume rewarding to those who read it.