Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within

, University Teaching Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
A wooden sculpture of a young boy standing upright. The boy is wearing a long, red piece of clothing that goes from his hips and covers his feet. His hands are together in front of his chest. The boy is bald and is looking down at his hands.

Prince Shōtoku at Age Two, Japanese, Kamakura period, datable to c. 1292. Wood (hinoki cypress) with polychromy; inlaid rock crystal (quartz) eyes. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Partial and promised gift of Walter C. Sedgwick in memory of Ellery Sedgwick Sr. and Ellery Sedgwick Jr., 2019.122.

University Teaching Gallery, Harvard Art Museums

This exhibition gives visitors the rare chance to encounter a significant 13th-century Japanese icon, Prince Shōtoku at Age Two, from the inside out. Legendary prince Shōtoku Taishi (c. 574–622) is regarded as the founder of Buddhism in Japan. At two years old (one by the Western count), he was believed to have taken several steps forward, faced east, put his hands together, and praised the Buddha. A sacred relic, the eyeball of the Buddha, then appeared between his hands. The diminutive life-size sculpture—the oldest and finest of its kind—depicts that miraculous moment.

This striking sculpture is remarkable not only for its seemingly animated presence, but also for the cache of more than 70 objects contained within the hollow body cavity. Sealed inside a veritable time capsule for over 700 years, these objects—relic grains, sutras, miniature sculptures, and scraps of paper inscribed with personalized poems and prayers—were carefully removed in the early 20th century. One of the most important objects from the group, an extremely rare printed Lotus Sutra dating to the Southern Song period (c. 1160), was subsequently gifted to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Thanks to the generosity of the Library of Congress, this exhibition reunites the Sutra with the remaining ensemble for the first time in over 70 years.

Also featured in the exhibition is the spectacular 14th-century painting The Legendary Biography of Prince Shōtoku, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The painting relates several miraculous incidents from the prince’s early life.

Curated by Rachel Saunders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Associate Curator of Asian Art, Harvard Art Museums.

This exhibition was made possible in part by the Robert H. Ellsworth Bequest to the Harvard Art Museums. Additional support was provided by Harvard University’s Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and by the Harvard Art Museums’ Leopold (Harvard M.B.A. ’64) and Jane Swergold Asian Art Exhibitions and Publications Fund and José Soriano Fund. Support for related programming provided by the Robert and Margaret Rothschild Lecture Fund.

Online Resources

A digital tool on the museums’ website allows visitors to learn more about the individual objects from within the sculpture, drawing on recent research and conservation efforts.

Learn more about the exhibition in our series of short videos available on Vimeo.

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Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within

Prince Shōtoku, or Shōtoku Taishi in Japanese, is considered the founder of Buddhism in Japan. Immediately after his death around 622, stories of his miraculous achievements began to form a rich sacred biography, which in turn generated painted and sculpted icons of the statesman. The Harvard Art Museums’ Prince Shōtoku at Age Two dates to about 1292 and is widely acknowledged to be the world’s oldest and finest surviving sculpture of the prince at this age, when he was said to have faced east, taken several steps forward, praised the Buddha, and then manifested a relic between his palms. Brought to Boston in the late 1930s by Ellery Sedgwick, owner-editor of The Atlantic Monthly, the “Sedgwick Shōtoku” was discovered to contain more than 70 dedicatory objects sealed within its hollow body. The objects were carefully removed from the sculpture in 1937 by a visiting Japanese conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, but further research was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. A second attempt to interpret the complex cache was mounted by Harvard professor John Rosenfield in the 1960s. In 2016, following the renovation and expansion of the Harvard Art Museums, an interdisciplinary and international team took up the baton, harnessing the museums’ enhanced facilities for collaborative research and the latest scholarly and technological developments to examine the Sedgwick Shōtoku from both the outside in and the inside out. How and why were so many objects placed inside this princely time capsule? Who put them there, and how do they work together to produce the spiritual charisma of the sculpture? Created in conjunction with an exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums (Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within) that unites the entire ensemble for the first time in over 70 years, this digital tool delves into the background of Prince Shōtoku and the community that assembled the cache, takes a closer look at some of the objects in the exhibition, and presents the results of technical analysis performed on the sculpture.

Exhibition Objects