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 robe of Wuzhun Shifan (d. 1249), a renowned Chinese Zen (Chan) priest who lived in the Southern Song dynasty. The following day, the very same robe (Skt: kashaya) 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 as the 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 twelve panels.