Shaka no Saku

"Shaka no Saku" — a work of Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha) — was carved in 1957, near the height of Munakata's international fame following his Venice Biennale Grand Prize the previous year. The title's construction ("no saku" meaning "the work/deed of") suggests the Buddha not as a static icon but as an active, present force. Munakata's rendering of the Buddha maintained the raw, powerful carving that had made his religious prints so arresting since the 1930s: no decorative refinement, no doctrinal correctness, but the direct transmission of a presence felt through the woodblock's resistant grain.