Fudo Myoo

Fudo Myoo, the Immovable Wisdom King, is one of the Godai Myoo of Esoteric Buddhism, depicted in iconography with a sword for cutting through delusion, a lasso for binding evil, and a wreath of flame surrounding a fierce, scowling face. The subject was natural for Munakata, whose lifelong devotion to Buddhism informed much of his print output and whose carving style — broad, blunt, and unsparing — suited Fudo's wrathful aspect. The print likely deploys heavy black masses for the deity's body and aureole, with the flames carved as rhythmic curving strokes that fill the surrounding washi. Munakata absorbed the iconography of the Myoo from temple statuary and painted mandalas rather than from earlier ukiyo-e treatments, and his Fudo prints retain the frontal hieratic posture of devotional sculpture. The image belongs to the strand of his work most explicitly tied to religious practice, in which printmaking served as an act of faith comparable to copying sutras.