Buddhist Painting and Sculpture in Japan

There are two competing accounts of the year Buddhism reached Japan: 538 and 552. The Jōgū Shōtoku Hōō Teisetsu records the earlier date, the Nihon Shoki the later one, and today 538 is considered more likely, based on the age of the sources. Either way, a form of prayer brought a form of art with it. In 623, the sculptor Tori Busshi made the Shaka Triad in the Kondō of Hōryū-ji — his name is inscribed on the halo. Hōryū-ji itself was long at the center of a debate: was it still the original temple, or had it burned down and been rebuilt? The question was settled in 1939, when excavations at the Wakakusa temple site found that it had indeed been rebuilt. It remains, even so, the oldest wooden building in the world.