Hermitary - Gallery - Art

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The fate of eremitism in medieval and later Japan is a story of politics but also cultural decline, as the political, military, and religious elites attempted to extend their centralized authority over every aspect of Japanese culture. Authentic eremitism stood in the way, but because of its popularity in society and key component in Zen, had to be defeated surreptitiously.
While Zen was a dominant religious expression in monasteries, the hermit practitioners (not unlike their Western counterparts) were a challenge to the staid institutions collecting their income from official sources, of little interest to the populace, resenting a Zen practice that thrived outside monastic control. The authentic Zen tradition was a threat to ongoing consolidation, such that elites undermined popular expressions of a threatening tradition such as Zen. And who more representative of these recalcitrant forces than Hanshan and his sidekicks. How better to neutralize them than to present them as foolish or even decadents.
Two methods were employed by the authorities. In the case of Zen, the popular Chinese Zen monks Hanshan, Shide, and Fenggan, were shredded of depth or insight and reduced to caricatures of dismissable eccentricity. For the second method, see the accompanying gallery of Japanese paintings addressing the Chinese sages associated with old Taoist circles and also reduced to decadents.