Fabricating the Tenjukoku Shucho Mandara and Prince Shotoku’s Afterlives

In this comprehensive study of the Tenjukoku Shucho Mandara, Chari Pradel provides a new interpretation of this assemblage of embroidered textile fragments associated with Prince Shotoku (574–622). By analyzing the scant visual evidence in the context of East Asian visual art of the period, the author recreates the subject represented on the seventh century artifact and demonstrates that it was not Buddhist (as previously believed), but associated with the funerary iconography of China that arrived in Japan with immigrants from the Korean peninsula. In addition, by closely investigating the context for the compilation of each of the documents associated with the artifact, Pradel illuminates the history of the embroidery and its changing significance and perception over the centuries.