Enkū

Enkū
One of Enkū's many carvings
School	Tendai Jimonshu
Personal
Born	1632 Mino Province, Japan
Died	1695 Koga Jinja, Horado, Japan
Senior posting
Successor	Encho

Enkū (円空) (1632–1695) was a Japanese Buddhist monk, poet and sculptor during the early Edo period. He was born in Mino Province (present-day Gifu Prefecture) and is famous for carving some 120,000 wooden statues of the Buddha and other Buddhist icons, many of which were given in payment for lodging on his pilgrimages to temples throughout Japan.

The most credible source has Enkū born in 1632 on the banks of the Kisogawa in central Japan in Mino Province (present-day Gifu Prefecture). His family was poor and, under the tightly controlled regime of the Tokugawa shoguns, there was little prospect of any kind of advancement. Social status, occupation, even religious affiliation, were rigidly prescribed. Travel was restricted. Tradition recounts that his mother was washed away and drowned in a river flood, probably when he was seven years old.

Soon after this, Enkū left home and became a Buddhist monk. The temple Enkū entered belonged to the Tendai Jimonshu, one of the older branches of Buddhism in Japan. Tendai teaching accepts many ways to realise enlightenment, including the way of the artist – the way of making and distributing Buddha statues. The Jimonshu, or Jimon branch was particularly connected with the yamabushi – literally "those who sleep in the mountains."

In common with many yamabushi, Enkū was a healer and a practitioner of kampo, herbal medicine. In fact, we still possess some of his personal notes on medicinal plants. As he travelled in remote regions, his skills as a doctor would have been eagerly received among the poorer people.

During his travels, he vowed to carve some 120,000 wooden statues. No two were alike. Many of the statues were crudely carved from tree stumps or scrap wood with a few strokes of a hatchet. Some were given to comfort those who had lost family members, others to guide the dying on their journeys to the next life. Thousands of these wooden statues remain today all over Japan, especially in Hida and Gifu regions. Enkū is probably now regarded as one of the most famous Japanese sculptors.