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Pilgrimage visualised: hanging scrolls in the religious everyday practice of Japan

November 24, 2009 - June 28, 2011
Exhibition management: Dr. Katja Triplett

Hanging scrolls not only adorn private households in Japan, but have been an everyday medium for conveying religious motifs and texts for centuries, including in public spaces. They can be found in Buddhist temples, Shintō shrines, and institutions of other Japanese religions. he paintings and prints, often magnificently bordered, celebrate the seasons, commemorate pivotal events in the history of a religious tradition, or eulogize the life of a religion's founder.

In addition to the important function of conveying cultural and religious values, hanging scrolls can also visually illustrate the individual merit of a pilgrim, namely if the respective scroll is provided with coveted seals and calligraphies of the individual stations of a pilgrimage. The hanging scroll sealed in this way is proof of a successfully completed pilgrimage on one of the traditional routes - some of which have existed for a millennium. These routes take pilgrims to thirty-three or even eighty-eight different Buddhist temples in often quite remote regions of the Japanese island country.

The exhibition presented the medium of the hanging scroll in contemporary Japanese religious culture with numerous examples, thus giving an impression of the practice of pilgrimage as an expression of devotion to Buddhist deities and teachers, which is still extraordinarily popular today. On display in the exhibition were objects from the holdings of the Museum of Religions / Religionskundliche Sammlung, including a modern pilgrim's robe in addition to various scroll paintings. Furthermore, the exhibition presented objects such as pilgrimage maps and votive tablets collected by Michael Pye, a religious scholar from Marburg, during his many years of research in Japan.

A catalog by Michael Pye and Katja Triplett has also been published for the exhibition, which you can purchase for €14.80 in the Religious Studies Collection.