Collection: Religious Art

In Japanese history, religion is less a matter of doctrinal allegiance than a harmonious constellation of practices, each offering a lens on the sacred.

Shinto is Japan’s indigenous animistic religious tradition, centered on the veneration of kami—spirits or forces residing in natural phenomena, ancestral lines, mountains, rivers, and mythic deities. It emphasizes seasonal rites, and a harmonious relationship with nature. Shinto does not demand exclusive belief, allowing it to coexist fluidly with other traditions.

Introduced from the Korean peninsula in the 6th century, Buddhism became a defining force in Japanese art, statecraft, and intellectual life. For over a millennium, the distinction between Shinto and Buddhism was not firm. Temples housed Shinto deities; shrines enshrined Buddhist icons. Kami were interpreted as local manifestations (suijaku) of universal Buddhas (honji).

Though not institutionalized in Japan as formal religions, Daoism and Confucianism strongly influenced Japanese thought, government, and aesthetics. Daoism contributed deities, Immortal sages, cranes, and turtles as symbols of long life, The cosmological animals, The Five Elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and Yin–Yang cosmology. Daoist motifs permeate esoteric Buddhist art (particularly Shingon) and literati painting (sennin figures, hermit sages, mountain ascetics).

Confucianism shaped: bushido, the samurai code and its ethics of loyalty, hierarchy, filial piety, and was the basis of the Tokugawa administrative and educational systems. Confucian symbols—such as plum blossoms, bamboo, and pine (the “Three Friends of Winter”)—became common themes in decorative arts.

Japanese religious sculpture is among the most refined in the world. Due to this confluence of thought, traditional religious furnishings in Japan span both Shinto and Buddhist spheres, often with shared forms and borrowed iconography from Daoism and Confucianism.