Ajita, the Fifteenth of the Sixteen Arhats

Kano Kazunobu, a painter of the Kano school, received prestigious commissions from Buddhist temples. He was honored by the Imperial Court in 1856 for his talent and given the honorary title “Hokkyō” (Bridge of the Law). His work features Western techniques, such as foreshortening, along with traditional Buddhist motifs. The set of 16 “achievers” (rakan in Japanese, arhat in Sanskrit) to which these two examples belong is an important and rare precursor to his great masterpiece, Five Hundred Arhats, a set of 100 hanging scrolls commissioned by the Zōjōji Temple in Tokyo.