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Candidly, I had not even
heard the name till I read it in the off-print of an article that the
distinguished scholar of Central Asia and Buddhism, Prof Lokesh
Chandra, kindly sent me the other day. But I was fascinated, and
decided to read more about this man whom he talked about: Enku, a
Japanese monk/sculptor of the 17th century. The man, I got to learn,
was a legend in his own lifetime, and is seeing a revival in his land
now. Apparently, somewhere close to the 14th century, the great art
of sculpture in Japan had begun to decline: sameness setting in,
cliché following cliché. And it is in this atmosphere that Enku, who
had become a monk at a very young age and was attached to the old
Senkoji temple, not far from Hiroshima, decided to do things
differently. The accepted thing was for sculptors who came from
traditional families to supply finely made, sophisticated works to
great temples and to the households of the noble and the wealthy:
their work — often lacquered and covered in expensive gold leaf with
gilt accessories — came to reflect the wealth and patronage of a
temple. But that kind of work had also taken on a mechanical,
predictable character. In the carving of
wooden statues, the normal practice used to be to carve different
blocks of wood separately, and then, to assemble these. And then, to
finish these in bright colours, especially when it came to religious
sculpture. Departing from all that, Enku carved each figure from a
single block of wood, and as a matter, of course, did not paint his
figures or give them even a uniform coat of grey. Nor did he make any
attempt to hide the marks that his tools made on the wood or conceal
the knots in the material. There they stood, unvarnished, unpainted,
proclaiming the raw method used in making them: completely honest as
statements. The minimalism was remarkable, and the roughness
evident. There might be some limited incisions with the chisel to
bring out features of the face; nothing more. But Enku made no
apologies, for he did not lay claim to being an ‘artist’. As the
monk that he was, he saw himself simply as a devotee of the Buddha.
And his passion for the Lord was such that he vowed, according to
legend, to carve more than a hundred thousand Buddhist figures — the
number is put sometimes at 1,20,000 — during his lifetime. Enku,
who figures in a late 18th century text called the "Eccentrics of
Recent Times’, it is said, used to travel the length and breadth of
his land, offering to carve statues for local people from local timber
in exchange only for food and lodging. He would stay in a monastery or
temple, locate a tree or piece of timber nearby and go about his task,
leaving the piece he had carved behind. Today, it is estimated that as
many as 5,300 works of his have survived, and more are turning up. The
National Museum of Japan, recognising the importance of his work,
devoted a whole exhibition to his work not long ago. It is entirely
possible that the revival of interest in Enku’s work owes itself in
part to even highly sophisticated people beginning to see in his rough
cut work shades of Cubist or Expressionist work. But at the time that
he was cutting and hewing and fashioning from raw timber his figures,
Enku was entirely unselfconscious. He was making images of the Buddha,
or related Buddhist figures, because he loved to do it, and he made
them with the only means he had at his disposal: his passion, and his
axe and chisel. Not un-often, this people’s sculptor
carved small works, but he is also known to have made imposing
statues, depending upon the material available to him and the context
in which he was working. There is, thus, a 2-metre-tall statue of a
figure known to guard temple gateways — the equivalent of our dvarapalas
— that still stands in the ground of the Senkoji temple. Enku
carved this from a living tree in the compound of the temple, perched
on a ladder, and left it there retaining the stumps of branches on its
rear surface. There is also the figure of the Kannon in the Seihoji
temple that he made, with nine heads and 28 arms, inspired by those
great statues of the Bodhisattva with a thousand heads. There is
power in honesty, and that power belongs to Enku’s simple work.
Flaws, knots, cuts did not matter: it was the warmth and the heartfelt
sincerity with which this priest/sculptor worked that stands out. To
touch the heart of the faithful was his aim, it would seem, and in
this he succeeded. Much as so much folk work made by unknown,
unremembered hands, in our own land does: rudely fashioned icons,
blocks of stone with minimal work on them, wood simply daubed with
primary colours or covered with silver paper, all because it summons
forth faith, offers solace.
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In contrast, Enku, who was completely
self-taught, decided to break away from tradition and traditional
techniques. He began to hew with axe and chisel — the simplest of
tools — images from single chunks of wood. 
The sculptures that Enku made were not made for
affluent people living in big towns, or for temples of great means. He
made these for farming people, whose very existence was closely tied
to seasonal weather and diseases. Images of the Buddha, in their
belief, helped them combat evil influences, avert disease. With that
in their minds, they appear to have embraced Enku’s simple but
honest creations. There were, as everywhere else in the world, periods
when people died because they could not reap a harvest, or suffered
from epidemics. In those situations, or when the rains would not come,
it was Enku’s icons that they resorted to, prayers in their hearts
and offerings in their hands.