Featuring the renowned seventh-century gilt-bronze Śākyamuni (Shaka) triad at the Hōryūji, Constructing the Dharma King reveals how the impression of a Buddhist image evolved in Yamato, Japan, from the indistinct sense of divine otherness at the early stage of the transmission to more concrete ideals and values concerning families, authority, and kingship. According to the accompanying inscription, the Kashiwade, a low-ranking bureaucratic clan, commissioned the triad to commemorate the deaths of its family members. Considering the triad as an endpoint of a dynamic political re-envisioning spearheaded by Soga no Umako (d. 626) and the members of the Yamato sovereignty, Akiko Walley argues that the Kashiwade constructed the Shaka triad not simply as a private act of devotion, but a pivotal political act that demonstrated their allegiance and loyalty. This publication contends that the appearance of the Shaka triad was chosen to echo the new vision of a "Dharma King" that was manifested in Prince Umayato as the political persona orchestrated by Umako, and in the preceding Shaka triad statue at Asukadera produced by Umako and his closest allies. In the course of discussion, this book also reexamines the key points of debate surrounding this statue, including the reliability of the accompanying inscription, identity of its makers, and the statue's ties to the sculptural trends on the Asian continent.

This work is a case study of how a Buddhist statue functions within the social circle that created it. The golden hall Sakyamuni triad was not the largest, nor the most progressive, sculpture of its period, but it was constructed at the critical moment when Buddhism was penetrating into the most powerful and educated echelons of the society. Its patron was at the fringe of power--who understood exactly how the new religion was molding the worldview and the self-image of their more powerful kin--at a time embracing these new ideals rooted in Buddhism was becoming the strongest proclamation of allegiance and loyalty. The golden hall Sakyamuni triad shows a process of actively seeking to comprehend, and then choosing from among, sophisticated ideas in order to make Buddhism serve domestic goals. This discovery points us toward a radical re-visioning of early Japanese reception of Buddhism, which is often conceived of as an undiscerning adoption of half-understood concepts from a foreign power.