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

The Four Heavenly Kings guard the four cardinal directions. Zōchōten is the guardian of the south. This sculpture is said to be one of the Four Heavenly Kings originally preserved in the Northern Round Hall at Kōfukuji Temple. However, this provenance is doubtful, and its true origins are unknown. Of the supposed original Four Heavenly Kings, Kōmokuten (Skt. Virūpākṣa) is still owned by Kōfukuji Temple, this statue of Zōchōten (Skt. Virūḍhaka) and another of Tamonten (Skt. Vaiśravaṇa) are owned by the Nara National Museum, and Jikokuten (Skt. Dhṛtarāṣṭra) is owned by the Miho Museum.

In this work, Zōchōten’s right arm is raised to hold a trident-like weapon. His left rests on his hips, which are turned to the left. The right foot presses down on an evil demon’s head, and the left stands on its back. The statue’s pose is restrained in its dynamism, but the furrowed brow, wrathful eyes, and open mouth combine to form an impressively threatening facial expression. The figure emanates a sense of mass with its heavy physique and bulging muscles covered in armor. This early style of rendering mass seems to have been retained by Nara’s Buddhist sculptors even into the late Heian period (794–1185). The same rendering is found in statues of Tamonten (1159) and Jikokuten (1178) at Tōdaiji Temple, which were originally owned by Uchiyama Eikyūji Temple. The work also shares features with the Four Heavenly Kings in the Tentative Central Golden Hall of Kōfukuji Temple, which are presumed to have been created in 1189 when Kōfukuji Temple’s Southern Round Hall was reconstructed after being burned down by soldiers in 1180. These similarities suggest this statue belongs to a lineage of Four Heavenly Kings statues made in Nara from the end of the Heian period to the early Kamakura period (1185–1333). Scholars are divided as to whether this statue dates to the mid-Heian period (11th century) or the early Kamakura period (late 12th century), but all agree the statue was made by a Buddhist sculptor in Nara.