Fudo Myoo - New York City, NY
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Metro2
N 40° 46.762 W 073° 57.762
18T E 587529 N 4514782
This sculpture is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Waymark Code: WMN75B
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 01/09/2015
Views: 4
The Museum's website for this piece (
visit link) provides the following information:
"Fudo Myoo (Achala-vidyaraja)
Period: Heian period (794–1185)
Date: 12th century
Culture: Japan
Medium: Joined-woodblock construction with traces of color and cut-gold
Dimensions: H. 63 3/4 in. (162 cm)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975
Accession Number: 1975.268.163
On view in Gallery 223
Fudo Myoo is the most widely represented of the Buddhist deities known as Myoo, or Kings of Brightness. A fierce protector of the Buddhist Law, he is a direct emanation of the Buddha Dainichi Nyorai, the principal Buddha of Esoteric Buddhism. The first sculptures of Fudo made in Japan were seated, but standing sculptures like this one were carved beginning in the eleventh century. Fudo uses his sword to cut through ignorance and his lasso to reign in those who would block the path to enlightenment. The heavy weight of the shoulders and back is planted firmly on the stiffened legs, appropriate for a deity whose name means the “Immovable.”
Images of Fudo are often housed in temple halls called Gomado where a fire-burning ritual called the goma-e is performed. The ritual involves the burning of incense and other possessions to symbolically destroy defilements. This statue, originally composed of six hollowed-out pieces of wood, was formerly the central icon of the Kuhonji Gomado in Funasaka, twenty miles northwest of Kyoto. The hall has not survived. Fudo would once have had a mandorla carved in the shape of wild flames and inserted behind him into the rock upon which he stands."