Makakayo (Mahakasyapa), from the series "Two Bodhisattva and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni (Nibosatsu Shaka judai deshi)"

Makakayo (Mahakasyapa), 1968, is a Buddhist woodblock print by Shiko Munakata depicting one of the Ten Great Disciples of Sakyamuni Buddha. Mahakasyapa, traditionally regarded as the first Zen patriarch and the disciple who received the Buddha's mind-to-mind transmission of the Dharma through the silent holding up of a flower, is shown here as a frontal, monumental figure in Munakata's pared-down black-and-white idiom. This impression at the Art Institute of Chicago belongs to the 1968 reissue of the Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples (Nibosatsu Shaka judai deshi). The series, first carved in 1939, secured the sosaku-hanga master's international reputation by winning the printmaking prize at the 1955 Sao Paulo Biennale and the Grand Prix at the 1956 Venice Biennale, the first such honors ever awarded to a Japanese printmaker. The composition is a study in reductive force. Heavy contour lines define the robe, the shaved head, and the gesture of the hands, while small white shapes serve as eyes and as breath holes in the otherwise dense black field. The line itself is the subject as much as the disciple is: it swells and narrows like brushed calligraphy, betraying the speed and weight with which Munakata, severely myopic, carved his blocks with his face pressed close to the surface. As a Pure Land Buddhist, Munakata regarded the series as an act of religious devotion rather than artistic production, and he revisited the blocks throughout his life. The late impressions like this 1968 cutting are particularly admired for their commanding scale, mature confidence, and the way Munakata's line achieves the iconic stillness of medieval Japanese Buddhist statuary while remaining vibrantly contemporary.