The Nara Schools

Japonista Dictionary › Lineages

The Nara schools are the oldest lineages of Japanese Buddhism, established in the capital of Nara in the eighth century. Traditionally counted as six, they were schools of doctrine and scholarship rather than separate churches, and monks often studied several. Three survive today, and their great temples hold the finest Buddhist art of the age known as Tenpyō.

The surviving schools

• Kegon. Based on the Flower Garland Sutra, with its vision of a cosmos in which each part reflects the whole. Its head temple is Tōdaiji, home of the Great Buddha, Birushana.
• Hossō. The Yogācāra school, which analyses consciousness in exacting detail. Its head temples are Kōfukuji and Yakushiji.
• Ritsu. The school of monastic discipline and ordination, founded by the Chinese master Ganjin, who reached Japan in 753 after five failed voyages and the loss of his sight. His head temple is Tōshōdaiji.

The other three, Sanron, Jōjitsu and Kusha, survived only as fields of study.

The art of Tenpyō

Nara sculptors worked in gilt bronze, clay and hollow dry lacquer, producing figures of serene idealism and growing naturalism. The Yakushi triad of Yakushiji, the Ashura of Kōfukuji, the clay Four Heavenly Kings of Tōdaiji and the dry-lacquer portrait of Ganjin at Tōshōdaiji, the earliest portrait sculpture in Japan, are high points. The imperial storehouse, the Shōsōin, preserves the treasures of the age.

Collecting notes

• Nara period works are essentially museum and temple property. Later copies, temple prints and fragments of tiles and sutras are the accessible forms.
• Edo and Meiji reproductions of Nara masterpieces form an interesting field of their own.

In the collection

Browse Buddhist Statues and Sacred Art. Our collector concierge can search Japan for Nara-related material.

See also

• Periods of Japanese Buddhist Sculpture
• Buddhism in Japan: A Short History
• Materials and Making