The Exhibition ‘Sacred Ningbo’ opened

On July 18, the exhibition titled ‘Sacred Ningbo: Gateway of 1300 Years of Japanese Buddhism’ opened at the Nara National Museum (until August 30). Focusing on the port city of Ningbo, which served as a gateway for cultural artefacts from mainland China to be sent to Japan from the era of the Japanese missions to Tang China onwards, the exhibition illustrated how the Buddhist culture of Ningbo was adopted in Japan, featuring a total of 175 artefacts. It consisted of eight chapters: Chapter 1 ‘Seichi o ikikau hito, mono (People and Goods Travelling Between Sacred Sites)’; Chapter 2 ‘Ashōka dera – Busshari e no sūkei (Temple of King Ashoka – Veneration of the Buddha’s Relics)’; Chapter 3 ‘Enkeiji – Tendai jōdokyō no ryūsei (Yanqing Temple – The Rise of the Tendai Buddhism)’; Chapter 4 ‘Fudasan – Kannon no sumu shima (Mount Putuo – The Island where Bodhisattva Kannon Resides)’; Chapter 5 ‘Tendaisan no gohyaku rakan (The Five Hundred Arhats on Mount Tendai)’; Chapter 6 ‘Tōsenko – Shinbutsu ga kōrin suru seichi (Dongqian Lake – A Sacred Site Where Gods and Buddhas Descend)’; Chapter 7 ‘Umi o wataru zenritsu bunka (Culture of Zen and Vinaya Schools Crossing the Seas)’; and Chapter 8 ‘Kenminshi ga otozureta machi (The Towns Where Japanese Missions to Ming China Visited)’. This large-scale exhibition traced the history of how new Buddhist culture was brought to Japan through trade between Japan and the Song and Ming dynasties, beginning with monks such as Saichō and Ganjin, in a region that had long been revered as a sacred site of Chinese Buddhism. (Japanese)