Amida Nyorai (Amitabha)

Amida Nyorai — Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light and the central figure of Pure Land Buddhism, promising rebirth in the Western Paradise to all who invoke his name — appears in this 1937 print from Munakata's sustained engagement with Buddhist iconography. Amida was perhaps the most widely venerated figure in Japanese popular Buddhism, and Munakata's rendering would have drawn on both the formal iconographic tradition and his own visionary intensity. The tension between received form and personal energy is what makes his Buddhist prints so distinctive — the tradition present but transformed by the directness of his encounter with it.