A much-needed book in Japanese art history, Ikumi Kaminishi’s Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan, an analysis of the performative art of “picture deciphering,” or etoki, is also essential to anyone studying the uses of images in society. Covering the gamut of disciplines from art history to ethnography to religion, Kaminishi’s book is a good attempt at interdisciplinary practice and how that practice can be used to uncover the overlays of human imagination in the use of visual images.

Kaminishi explains that once etoki is understood as serving as propaganda, it will be easier to understand how the new Buddhist sects of the Kamakura period (1186–1333) became established in the field of religious practice among the general population. Throughout her book, Kaminishi argues that the etoki performer, whether male or female, is a propagator of the Buddhist faith. Pictures and text can be understood in infinite ways; but according to Kaminishi, the performer of the text and images is the wielder of power, and “strives for a uniform reception from an audience” (10). While it can occasionally be difficult to accept such overarching statements, Kaminishi’s inclusion of observations of contemporary examples of picture deciphering (practitioners of which she has extensively interviewed) make them seem less obtrusive. This is refreshing, as often art historians work as though the art is frozen in time, and in dredging up bits and pieces of the past for analysis, they may forget that paintings and sculptures were integrated with human life and traditions that sometimes continue into the present day. These aspects of etoki studied by Kaminishi form the strength of her book.

The first part of Explaining Pictures is a history of etoki recorded in diaries and other such private writings. As an example of etoki in history, she discusses the experience of Fujiwara Yorinaga (1120–56), son of the imperial regent Tadazane (1078–1162). Yorinaga attended the services of the Shôryôin at Shitennôji, a renowned monastery in Osaka associated with Prince Shôtoku (574–622), a founding figure in the history of Japanese Buddhism. Within the walls of the Edono (Picture Hall) of the Shôryôin, Yorinaga observed the performance of Prince Shôtoku’s biography in images, conducted by clerics for the purpose of expounding the doctrines of Buddhism through the life of Prince Shôtoku. It is in his writing about this event that the word “etoki” can be found for the first time. In the second chapter, Kaminishi compares historical descriptions of “picture explaining” with the extant Pictorial Biography of Prince Shôtoku, painted by Shûkei in 1788 at the Nara temple of Hôryûji. Through this comparison of the extant pictures with historical facts, Kaminishi brings to life a semblance of the experience of Yorinaga, a thousand years earlier. The author presents a credible interpretation of pictures of Shôtoku’s life and the uses to which others in Japanese Buddhism, such as Shinran (1173–1262), also found it valuable. In these early records etoki was enacted as formal religious teaching. The practice changed over time, however, as late medieval diaries of the fifteenth to sixteenth century describe a second type of etoki; this version was more popularly transmitted by itinerant preachers for the purpose of entertainment.

In part 2, Kaminishi considers the role of etoki performers in popularizing Pure Land Buddhism in the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries. In chapter 3, Kaminishi performs a standard interpretation of the right (jôzengi), left (jobungi), and lower (sanzengi) courts in relation to the central (gengibun) area of the Taima Mandara (an instructional diagram of the Pure Land). The thrust of her Pure Land studies is in chapter 4, where she discusses the use by the emerging new sects of Pure Land Buddhism of picture explaining as a proselytizing tool side by side with the nenbutsu hall. Kaminishi contends that images—whether biographical scrolls, pictures of Amida’s welcoming (raigôzu), or portraits—were essential to the growth of these new sects in securing believers among the common folk. Her discussion of how these sects contributed to the practice of public viewing of religious artifacts, such as mushiboshi (the annual airing of images and precious objects), is extremely important for understanding the ways in which icons were regarded and used by the populace. Her analysis documents the important role icons played for common people, and it demonstrates that they were not objects set aside from daily life.

Images of etoki performers as a source of historical evidence in relation to kanjin (temple fundraising campaigns) are the topics of the following chapters. The performance of pictures and the kanjin campaigns go hand in hand as effective proselytization, so that “etoki practitioners occupied a supramundane place in which they found freedom as itinerants and were unburdened by social custom. This marginality allowed etoki to be visible religious propagandists in a secular society” (103). As religious propagandists, they benefited not only Buddhist institutions, but they served public interests, such as providing welfare for the sick and needy, and infrastructure in the form of roads, bridges, and irrigation systems. They were the lower-ranking monks, mainly nenbutsu advocates, who went among the people to preach and collect money to maintain the monasteries and temples. Kaminishi does not explain clearly how these minor characters contributed to the movements initiated by the Kamakura leaders, such as Hônen (1133–1212), Shinran, and Ryonin (1073–1132), who apparently did not use etoki techniques themselves. As marginal figures, these performers were separated by social boundaries from the mainstream and pushed into association with other entertainers—at once holy yet untouchable. In the next chapter (chapter 6), Kaminishi attempts to capture the personal qualities of the medieval etoki performer through the Thirty-two Artisans Scroll (ca. 1494), created in relation to descriptive writings of aristocrats. She asks what did the etoki practitioner look like? How was she or he trained? Was she or he blind? What was the literary legacy of the etoki? Kaminishi strives to clarify the roles of these performers who breathed life into images and religion.

Completing the four parts, Kaminishi dwells on Kumano images and their attraction for women in the early modern period. There are a variety of images, often referred to as mandaras and related to the sacred mountain of Kumano, that display not only Buddhist iconography but also Shinto and Christian, and which are used to serve women by women etoki performers, who are referred to as Kumano bikuni. Under the Tokugawa government, travel was regulated, hindering the movement of kanjin campaigns; some Kumano bikuni were thus forced to become sex workers in order to survive, thereby heightening the social complexity of this etoki perfomer and her Kumano beliefs. Kumano images of the Ten Worlds of hells, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras, heavenly beings, arhats, pratyebuddhas, bodhisattvas, and Buddhas depict the circumstances of women in relation to their corporeal bodies, their offspring, and what awaits them in worlds beyond. An interesting case of iconographic hybridity, the Kumano mandala connects with a multiplicity of beliefs that can soothe female problems. Buddhist, Shintô, and Christian ideologies merge with the legends of Mount Kumano and its relative Mount Tateyama, where travel becomes spiritual movement as the listeners of etoki grasp the messages of salvation.

While many of us have studied the narratives of handscroll paintings and pondered the pictorial hanging scrolls in museums, we rarely make the connection between the lives of these objects to the real worlds in which they were used. Kaminishi makes a valiant attempt to recover the world of the etoki performers and the objects they employed to propagate Buddhism for the betterment of its institutions and society at large. The history of Japanese art is richer for Kaminishi’s efforts.

While Kaminishi must be congratulated for her work, there are also some embarrassing problems that should have been noticed by her editor and outside readers. This extremely interesting book is marred by careless errors, such as on page 167, where the Konjaku monogatari is dated to the tenth century, even though it is commonly acknowledged as a twelfth-century collection of folk literature. A problem for Kaminishi lies within her extremely broad range of study covering art history, Buddhism, literature, history, and ethnography, along with her incredibly long time span stretching from antiquity to the present, all of which requires an added expertise that is extremely difficult to acquire, but which is the challenge of interdisciplinary studies. Interdisciplinarity for the past decade has been held up to scholars as an ideal pursuit in research, but few have the time to acquire training in multiple disciplines. I point this out partially in response to Keller Kimborough’s astute review of Kaminishi’s book (“Ikumi Kaminishi, Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 33.1 (2006): 190–94). Many of the issues he points out, such as Kaminishi’s odd handling of translations of Japanese waka poetry (192) and her failure to deal with certain religious aspects (192), can only be solved by consulting an expert in those fields or spending years learning them. Lack of training in other fields in order to be truly interdisciplinary is perhaps Kaminishi’s chief failing, but her book is a pioneering study that must be commended. All in all, Kaminishi has made a significant and extremely interesting contribution to the field of Japanese art history in English.