If there is a work of art, then there is the person who made that work. However, if we take our premise into contemporary art historical debate, then depending on the time and locale of the creation of a work, it does not necessarily mean that the maker of the work transcendentally controlled all aspects of the work. The relationship between an art work and its maker is such that the relationship both indivisibly links the two at the same time that it emphasizes the boundaries of each. At times the art work and its maker are freed into separate times and places, each setting out on their own different journey through history.
      And yet, for the art work, what does the existence of the maker mean? The author would like to consider this question. The art work itself is by nature an indivisible individual item with its own anonymity. Hence, within the life of the art work, the maker stands for the art work as the partner who guarantees the individual identity of the art work and is the connection point of intermediation between the art work and the outside world. Or the maker can function as the art work's spokesperson to the outer world.
      There are several particularly compelling examples for a consideration of this question in the author's own field of inquiry, the Buddhist paintings which were brought to Japan from the Asian continent. These Buddhist paintings are primarily examples of Chinese Song and Yuan paintings or Koryo dynasty works from Korea that were brought to Japan from the Kamakura period onward and preserved primarily in Japan's temples as treasured ancient examples of Chinese painting. More than a dozen makers of these paintings have been identified, but amongst that group, two stand out as unusual, namely Xijin Jushi and Zhang Sigong. Xijin has long been considered one of the most important painters of Arhat images, but in fact, the name Xijin Jushi was given to a completely fictitious Buddhist painter. The name and existence of Xijin Jushi resulted from the mistaken reading of the signatures of two Southern Song Buddhist painters active in Ningbo, Jin Dashou and Jin Chushi.
      On the other hand, Zhang Sigong was a Buddhist painter who may have lent his hand specifically to the creation of Amitabha images. Nevertheless, from the modern period onwards there have been times when he was thought to be either a legendary painter or the maker of Buddhist paintings in Koryo dynasty Korea.
      The Buddhist paintings brought to Japan from the Asian continent in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods have now spent many more years of their lives in Japan than they spent in their own homelands. There are also works in Korean and Western collections which had originally been handed down in Japan and then, in modern times, traveled overseas yet again to a new home. These paintings are the witnesses of the now lost past of their homelands, and at the same time, they then stand as witnesses to Japan's own past. However, there are almost no records of these works in their original homelands. These works were recorded in the catalogue of art treasures compiled by Muromachi shogunal art advisors known as the Kundaikansauchôki, and in that record, they took their first role on the stage of history as spokesperson in the names of specific Chinese painters. These art works were given the function of orator by their notation in this catalogue, and by the system of connoisseurship that formed that catalogue. Thus, these works have passed through an event-filled changing history on a journey through time and space accompanied, will ye, nil ye, by the artists named as their makers and partners in this journey. The case of Buddhist paintings attributed to the hands of Xijin Jushi and Zhang Sigong stands as a symbolic example of this process.
      The Buddhist paintings that have been traditionally attributed to either Xijin Jushi or Zhang Sigong have been observed, judged, bought and sold, and collected as either art works or cultural properties. In the lives or histories of these paintings, what kind of existence, what kind of role was taken by the two painters who swayed the identities of the paintings over the ages? At the very least, hasn't the existence of painters created half out of fiction, half out of truth, been carved into the works themselves as a negative legacy, an inextinguishable memory that runs through the subsequent lives of these Buddhist paintings that traveled to Japan from the Asian continent. Still, unchanged today, painter attributions accompanying works of art have great meaning in our evaluation and consideration of the Buddhist paintings brought to Japan.