Shaka Nyorai

Shaka Nyorai — the historical Shakyamuni Buddha in his aspect as Tathagata, the Thus-Come One — appears in this 1937 print from Munakata's fundamental year of Buddhist engagement. The Tathagata (Nyorai) is the Buddha in his transcendent aspect, not the historical prince who attained enlightenment but the embodiment of awakening itself, present in all beings and phenomena. Munakata's rendering of Shaka Nyorai would carry the full force of his carving energy directed at this most central of Buddhist subjects: the woodblock knife encountering the wood and finding the Buddha's presence within it.