Buddhist material culture, "Indianism," and the construction of Pan-Asian Buddism in prewar Japan

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism was marked by a wide-ranging fascination with Buddhist origins in India. This Indian turn in Japanese Buddhist circles manifested not only in elite academic scholarship, but also in Buddhist art and architecture. In this article I consider how the early twentieth-century artistic and architectural production of Ito Chuta and Otani Kozui deployed Indian and Southeast Asian Buddhist motifs as part of the effort to create a universalized Japanese Buddhism.