Buddhist Bells and Dragons: Under and Over Water, in and Out of Japan

Buddhist Bells and Dragons: Under and Over Water, In and Out of Japan recovers the essential but unrecognized roles of Buddhist temple bells in the history of art, religious studies, and the history of interregional and international relations with Japan. Specifically attending to the agency of bronze bells made as early as the seventh century, the chapters address how bells function as significant commodities of material and emotional exchange.

Abundant Japanese stories and illustrations of Buddhist bells being transported across the sea or sunk in bodies of water are shared to illuminate why the relationship between dragons, bells, and water is so pervasive in Japanese culture. Utilizing object biography, the book analyzes stories of the lives of key bells from multiple perspectives that extend long past any human lifetime. The most famous is the eighth-century bell from Miidera temple, known for its mythical resurfacing from the Dragon King’s undersea palace and its legendary relationship to Benkei, a real twelfth-century warrior conflated into the thirteenth-century historical event of the Miidera bell’s theft and return. Important bells from Korea, China, and Ryukyu (Okinawa) that had contact with Japan are also treated to offer fresh explanations of the pivotal roles bells held in the wider history of international maritime exchange, in both trade and plunder, that reach far beyond a single nation’s narrative. As the first of its kind, this book will open minds to the significance of the art, history, emotion, and religious devotion surrounding bells in Japan as they align with dragons and water.

Buddhist Bells and Dragons expands the notions of East Asian religious art by demonstrating the vital history of bells for an audience of scholars and students of not only Buddhist studies, but also art history, religious studies, East Asian studies, and international political history. The final chapter, on the seizure and return of Japanese Buddhist bells during and after the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945), brings the subject to the near present. All told, the vibrant culture behind Japan’s bronze temple bells, long hidden in plain sight, is revealed.

Sherry D. Fowler is professor of Japanese art history at the University of Kansas.