Uga Benzaiten

Hideki Maekawa (b1967 Awaji Island, Japan) was trained as an oil painter and took up making sculpture around 2006, primarily using timber felled in rural areas. Inspired by discussions with renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, in recent years Maekawa has focussed on creating Buddhist sculptures using traditional techniques and found materials. This is the first such sculpture the artist has made available for sale.

The work depicts Uga Benzaiten, a revered Japanese goddess who originated in India in the form of Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of music, poetry and learning. Sarasvati is also the personification of India’s sacred Sarasvati River. The goddess was introduced to Japan through China sometime in the 7th or 8th century, and welcomed into Japan’s Buddhist pantheon as Benzaiten, an eight-armed deity and warrior who defends the nation.

During the late 11th or early 12th century, the Hindu-Buddhist deity Benzaiten was adopted into Japan’s ancient animist belief system Shintō, the way of the gods. She was conflated with an obscure Shintō human-faced snake deity (kami) named Ugajin who is associated with water, rice, good fortune and wealth. The iconography of the composite deity of Uga Benzaiten combines the eight-armed Buddhist form carrying weapons and wealth-promising attributes with a headdress comprising a Shintō shrine gate (torii) and an image of Ugajin. Uga Benzaiten has become one of Japan’s popular ‘Seven gods of fortune’. As Maekawa states, ‘Japanese Buddhist statues are foreign deities brought to the small island nation from countries across the sea… As the momentum of art production spread from Nara and Kyoto to other provinces, Buddhist sculptures were repeatedly crossbred with old rain and soil … at last becoming an endemic species of Japan … ‘

Uga Benzaiten is depicted here with her eight arms holding her established attributes: a treasure stick; the key to the treasure house; a bow and arrows; a sword; a trident; the Wheel of Law, and a bright wish-fulfilling jewel. Her halo features three flaming jewels, symbols of the eternal flame of the Buddha’s teachings.