Bishamonten Ritual Mirror (1000s–1100s): Art, History and Details

Bishamonten Ritual Mirror (1000s–1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Bishamonten, the Buddhist guardian of the North, appears here with an entourage. Early votive mirrors like this one are called kyōzō, literally “mirrors with images.” One theory is that they appeared along with the development of Shinto-Buddhist combinatory thought, in which specific Buddhist deities were identified with specific kami, or Shinto deities. In this theory, sacred mirrors venerated as proxies for kami came to be incised with images of Buddhist deities. Another idea is that they developed in the context of Esoteric Buddhist ritual.

Object facts

• Title: Bishamonten Ritual Mirror
• Date: 1000s–1100s
• Culture: Japan, Heian period (794–1185)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: silvered bronze with incised design
• Dimensions: Diameter: 15.3 cm (6 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1977.32

A detail from the museum

Bishamonten sits on a demon who struggles beneath his weight.

Collection credit

The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1977.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 1 (1978): 2–42.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.