Image: Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo
The Suntory Museum of Art will give the Important Cultural Property pair ‘Elephant and Lion’ its first public display since the works entered the museum’s collection in 2025.
The sculptures are thought to be the animal pedestals, or bases, once supporting Samantabhadra and Manjushri, who served as attendants on either side of Shakyamuni Buddha. The pair dates to the 12th century, during the Kamakura period.
The elephant is distinguished by its full, fleshy volume and the deeply modeled folds of its skin, while the lion has a large, curled mane and a commanding, powerful body. Traces of the sculptures’ original polychromy and kirikane decoration also remain. The museum describes the work as an outstanding example of Kamakura-period animal sculpture.
Chapter 3 of the exhibition is titled ‘Image-Making—Forms of the Buddha Entrusted with Wishes.’ From the medieval period onward, sacred images were made widely in different parts of Japan, and inscriptions and deposited contents have often expressed wishes to live peacefully in everyday life or to be reborn in the Pure Land after death.
