During the early Edo period, a Buddhist monk named Enku (1632-1695) wandered all over Japan, helping the poor along the way. During his travels, he carved some 120,000 wooden statues of the Buddha. No two were alike, these were not elaborate monuments for self-aggrandizement. Many of the statues were crudely carved from tree stumps or scrap wood with a few strokes of a hatchet. Some were given to comfort those who had lost family members, others to guide the dying on their journeys to the afterlife. Thousands of these wooden statues remain today all over Japan.

Copyright © 2007 enku.com                    Powered by Engineer Partner The One Stop Outsource