Two Buddhist sculptures - figures of Bonten (Brahma) and Taishakuten (Sakra devanam indra) - currently in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, are made out of hollow dry lacquer. This makes the works some of the rare extant examples of dry lacquer sculpture from the Nara period. In the late Meiji period these sculptures were part of a purchase of Buddhist sculptures by Masuda Eisaku from the Kofukuji temple in Nara. They were then in the Masuda family collection for a long time. In 1965 the sculptures entered the collection of the American, Avery Brundage, and they were part of his later gift to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
  This report will trace the original form of these two Buddhist sculptures that passed through various hands.
  As is well known today, there are photographs showing the state of the Kofukuji temple around the end of the Meiji period, which are thought to have been taken immediately before Masuda purchased the sculptures. One of these photographs shows a mixed group of many damaged sculptures, with the Bonten and Taishakuten sculptures visible in the group. The photograph reveals that both works were in a state of great damage; half of the Bonten's head was missing, and the entire head of the Taishakuten figure was lost. Therefore, scholars have understood that most original sections from the time of the sculpture's creation are no longer extant.
  The extant versions of these sculptures were assembled and organized at the beginning of the Taisho period by Niiro Chunosuke, the first head of the Second Division of the Nihon Bijutsuin. Unfortunately, the restoration reports on these sculptures have not been located, and thus it is not directly known what type of conservation work was carried out on the sculptures. In my analysis here, I use X-ray photography of the figures at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco to study what type of conservation work was conducted at that time. Further, a comparison of these works with other dry lacquer sculptures sold from Kofukuji during the Meiji period will allow us to consider the aims and methods of such restorations conducted when modern restoration techniques were first introduced to Japan.
  In addition, clarifying the current state of the works on the basis of these studies, this paper will also express a theory on which building at Kofukuji originally housed these sculptures.
  The current state of these sculptures has been clarified on the basis of the historical changes they have undergone, and it goes without saying that this is a fundamental process in the study of these works. This report is nothing more than a notation of an extremely common basic study process. However, the accumulation of such basic studies, in other words, the accumulation of a variety of research materials, is linked to the formation of so-called archives.