Hotei (mid-1500s): Art, History and Details

Hotei (mid-1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yamada Dōan I (Juntei) (Japanese, d. 1573); Tōkei Jakurin (Japanese, 1675–1735).

The work and its context

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

Hotei is a semilegendary figure who may have lived from the late 800s to the early 900s. He later became prominent in Chan (or Zen, in Japanese) Buddhist literature. He epitomizes the freewheeling figure outside the mainstream monastic system—in which people strive for enlightenment through prescribed methods—who nonetheless attains a high level of spiritual awakening. The inscription warns against seeking enlightenment by conscious effort: Big stomach, gaping garment, Treasures gathered deep in the bottom of his bag, Passing through the sky is another road, Do not seek that to which his fingertip points.

Object facts

• Title: Hotei
• Date: mid-1500s
• Creator attribution: Yamada Dōan I (Juntei) (Japanese, d. 1573); Tōkei Jakurin (Japanese, 1675–1735)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Mounted with knobs: 170.5 x 53.7 x 2.5 cm (67 1/8 x 21 1/8 x 1 in.); Painting: 85.6 x 35.6 cm (33 11/16 x 14 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1978.48

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kokka 國華, v. 924 (1970), pp. 20–21.
• Ichimatsu Tanaka 田中一松 and Tanio Nakamura 中村渓男. Sesshū, Sesson 雪舟・雪村. Tōkyō: Kōdansha, 1973.
• Shimizu, Yoshiaki, and Carolyn Wheelwright. Japanese Ink Paintings from American Collections: The Muromachi Period: an Exhibition in Honor of Shūjirō Shimada. Princeton, NJ: Art Museum, Princeton University: Distributed by Princeton University Press, 1976.

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.