The Buddhist World of Hokusai: Lotus Practices and the Religious Frenzy of Urban Edo.

The 1893 biography of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) by Iijima Kyoshin (1841–1901) portrays the artist as interested in Buddhism and engaged in different types of devotional activity. In particular, it repeatedly points out that it was known to his contemporaries that Hokusai was ‘a believer of Buddhism, who joined the Nichiren school, deeply venerated Nichiren [1222–1282] and every now and then went to worship at the sacred places related to Nichiren. According to the information collected by Iijima, Hokusai kept a statue of Nichiren in his house, studied Buddhism with a Buddhist scholar and habitually recited a dharani from the Lotus Sutra, the main scripture of the Nichiren school. Other deities in which he put his trust, such as Myōken, were also deities venerated in Nichiren temples. While it is not easy to assess how reliable all the details of Iijima’s account are, the art-names that Hokusai took throughout his career and some of his works, especially those produced in his late years, indeed suggest that Hokusai had developed a spiritual connection to the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren and the deities of this Buddhist tradition. Was Hokusai an eccentric believer, as it is hinted in Iijima’s account? What did it mean to be a ‘Nichiren believer’in the late Edo period and in an urban setting such as the city of Edo? What would Hokusai’s life as a Hokke (法華) devotee have implied? This essay sets out to recover the atmosphere of religious Edo, probing the cults and places associated with the Hokke school (as today’s Nichiren school was called in premodern times), in search of further evidence for Hokusai’s Buddhist concerns