Sacred Journeys and Institutional Rivalries: Pilgrimage Mandalas and the Art of Fundraising in Medieval Japan

Sacred Journeys and Institutional Rivalries is a detailed and richly illustrated exploration of pilgrimage mandalas (sankei mandara). These large-scale, brightly colored landscape paintings, which appeared in late-medieval Japan, present aerial views of sacred sites, the roads leading to them, and the rites performed there. Carried by itinerant monks and nuns throughout the country, pilgrimage mandalas were used in lively narrative performances called etoki. These paintings displayed a new kind of artistic language by mixing depictions of otherworldly miracles with everyday pleasures accessible to all would-be visitors.

After exploring the origins of this art, Talia Andrei engages in a series of detective-like analyses, unraveling the subtle hints of institutional networks and power struggles concealed within the figural and architectural motifs of the paintings. This approach shows how visual sources, when read with and against textual records, can fundamentally change, shift, or enhance what we know about a given time and place in history. Studied in this way, a pilgrimage mandala not only reveals hidden clues to historical uncertainties left murky in the textual archive but also serves as a visual testament to the cultural and institutional forces that shaped its creation.