Fracturing Realities: Staging Buddhist Art in Domon Ken’s Photobook Murōji (1954)

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the immediate postwar, photographer Domon Ken (1909–1990) embarked on a journey to the Murōji Temple in Nara Prefecture to capture its Buddhist treasures. The body of work was published in his photobook Murōji (1954), and has often been interpreted as a nostalgic spectacle that romanticizes Japan’s Buddhist heritage for mass consumption. Yet, a close examination of the images and their arrangement in the photobook reveals Domon’s indifference to reconstructing an accessible past. Contrary to the resurgence of Zen Buddhism in the 1950s, Domon’s project absconded from any politicized attempt that sought to authenticate the “tradition” or spiritual “essence” of Japan. While beholders are granted with unprecedented proximity to the icons, Domon’s interest in tactility and his manipulation of scale paradoxically render these statues illegible and unfamiliar. Equally significant is his juxtaposition of legible and abstract close-ups, which shatters the past into incongruent fragments. The photobook Murōji thereby raises questions that continue to resonate today: what is the role of documentary photography in postwar Japanese culture? In what ways can photography function as a metaphorical ground upon which competing ideas of nation, cultural memory, and subjectivity are mediated?