Ken Domon’s Muroji Temple

Muroji, a mountain temple in northeastern Nara Prefecture known as "the Women's Koya." Ken Domon first visited it in 1939 and was completely captivated by the graceful halls and pagoda lining the mountain gorge and by its early Heian wooden Buddhist sculptures. He praised the seated Shaka Nyorai in particular, saying "there was no Buddha statue more handsome in all the land, with a face as clever and intelligent as this one," and even during the war and the shortages just after it he went out carrying equipment and rice on his back to continue photographing. He never felt he had captured it fully; it was a temple that kept stirring Domon's desire to photograph, as if there were no end to what he could shoot. The book contains his black-and-white masterpieces taken from before the war until 1977, snapshots taken during the shoots, and essays full of his love for Muroji.

Publisher: Crevis
Publication year: 2019
Pages: 159
Dimensions: 258 × 199 mm

Ken Domon / Muroji Temple / Buddhist Architecture