Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336-1573)

Joseph D. Parker is Associate Professor of East Asian Thought at Pitzer College.

"This book presents concrete data—biographical, intellectual-historical, and art-historical—pertaining to eminent Zen Buddhist monks of the Muromachi period who have not previously been the object of serious study. Parker challenges the entrenched views of Japanese scholars who dismiss the Zen monk artists and art critics of the period as spiritual degenerates who had succumbed to worldly enticements. His weaving together of the themes of illusion, playfulness, and non-dualism and his use of them to explicate the attitudes toward art evinced in the writings of medieval monks is original and provocative." — T. Griffith Foulk, University of Michigan

• List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Chinese Religious and Cultural Context 2. Japanese Five Mountains Zen and the Poem-and-Painting Scrolls 3. The East Asian Religious Context for Cultural Practice 4. Zen Buddhist Readings of the Landscape: The Hermit at Court 5. Buddhist Illusion and the Landscape Arts 6. Buddhist Playfulness and the Landscape Arts Conclusion Epilogue Notes Glossary Selected Bibliography Index