S P O T ／ SPOT-354

Osako Magai Dainichi Nyorai Seated Statue

大迫磨崖大日如来坐像おおさこまがいだいにちにょらいざぞう

In the farm country of Bungo-ono, Oita — a region so thick with cliff-carved Buddhas it is nicknamed 'the mecca of magaibutsu' — one figure stands apart for how it was made. Set into a rock grotto five meters high and six wide, sheltered under a tiled wooden roof, the Osako Dainichi sits over three meters tall, hands folded on the knees in the gesture of the Womb-Realm Mahavairocana. But it is not simply carved. The sculptors first hacked a rough body out of the volcanic rock, then troweled clay laced with hemp fiber over it, fifteen to twenty centimeters thick, and modeled the surface by hand — a hybrid technique called sekishin-sozo, the 'stone-core clay statue,' with almost no parallels in Japan. The result is a Buddha with the heavy, swollen volume of something half-grown out of the cliff and a face that is blunt, naive, and oddly arresting. After the local Ogata clan fell, the statue is said to have taken on the character of a spirit-pacifying deity. It has been a Tangible Cultural Property of Oita Prefecture since 1976.