Miroku

The bodhisattva Maitreya — Miroku in Japanese — who will appear as the future Buddha after Shakyamuni's teachings have been forgotten, appears here as a sculptural or devotional subject. Kasamatsu's depiction likely references a specific Miroku statue from one of Japan's ancient Buddhist temples, rendered in a style that draws on the iconographic tradition of the Asuka and Nara periods when Miroku worship was particularly fervent in Japan. The image bridges his landscape work with the Buddhist devotional subjects he explored in his later career.