Enku: Sculptor of a Hundred Thousand Buddhas

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

122 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 1982

About the author

Kazuaki Tanahashi, born and trained in Japan and active in the United States since 1977, has had solo exhibitions of his calligraphic paintings internationally. He has taught East Asian calligraphy at eight international conferences of calligraphy and lettering arts. Also a peace and environmental worker for decades, he is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enku is such a fascinating subject that anything written about him might easily get 5 stars. I felt like this was something of an extended Wikipedia entry (of course, this was published before Wikipedia existed, and the Internet, too), though the black and white photographs of his sculptures, the smattering of short poems he wrote, and the folkloric anecdotes collected about his life, make it something more than that. I was looking for a deeper treatment of his life and work in this short publication, it seems. Not bad, but not memorable, either.