National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

This robe is associated with a mysterious tale. According to legend, Ryūshū Shūtaku (d. 1338), a former abbot of Nanzen-ji Temple in Kyoto, once had a dream in which he acquired the Buddhist robe (Skt: kashaya, J: kesa) of Wuzhun Shifan (d. 1249), a renowned Chinese Zen (Chan) priest of the Southern Song dynasty. The following day, the very same robe was presented to Ryūshū. In celebration of this auspicious dream, the Zen monks of Nanzen-ji named the robe the “Dream-Affirming Robe.”

The inscription on the box in which this robe was preserved identifies it to be this same “Dream-Affirming Robe,” but there is no definitive proof of its connection to Wuzhun Shifan. Because the vibrant peony arabesque patterns hand-painted in gold closely resemble patterns found on the covers of Buddhist sutras from the Goryeo dynasty, some have suggested that this robe may have originated in Goryeo-dynasty Korea. The current composition of the robe consists of twelve panels, but a portion of the original textile is lost. Given that kashaya are typically composed of an odd number of panels, this example originally would have had more than its current twelve panels.