Suntory Museum of ArtTokyo Midtown, Roppongi

The Art of the Lotus Sutra: To Create Is to Pray

Upcoming12 December 2026 – 7 February 2027¥1,800

Lavishly decorated sutras, Buddhist statues and paintings inspired by the Lotus Sutra, tracing how devotion to the text shaped Japanese art from antiquity to today.

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On now Opening in December 2026

Preview: written before the show opened

An elephant with thick folds of wrinkled skin and a lion with a big curling mane, both Kamakura-period, still carry their original paint and cut-gold patterns. The museum thinks they were the seats of the bodhisattvas Fugen and Monju, and this is their first showing since Suntory acquired them in 2025.

The Lotus Sutra counts making things as good deeds: copying it, decorating it, building pagodas, carving statues. The show follows those acts. You move from pagodas, including small clay ones carrying sutra text, to sutras copied onto bronze so they wouldn't rot, then to statues. An epilogue turns to Edo artists; Hokusai, by tradition, recited the sutra as he walked. It runs from a fifth- or sixth-century Sanskrit leaf to a Hiroshige print of an Edo restaurant.

Works rotate: 12 December to 11 January, then 13 January to 7 February. Adults pay ¥1,800 (¥1,600 in advance), and the ¥3,000 advance pair ticket works as two visits for one person. Junior-high age and under free. Fridays until 20:00.

Editor's pick

A Kamakura-period elephant and lion, still in original paint and cut gold, probably once seated the bodhisattvas Fugen and Monju. Around them, sutras copied onto bronze, tiny clay pagodas and a Hiroshige print: making things as prayer.

Look for

The elephant and lion
Look for the elephant's heavy wrinkles and the lion's curled mane, with original colour and cut-gold patterns still on them; shown for the whole run, their first display since 2025.
The clay pagodas
Twelve of 37 small clay pagodas carrying sutra text, dug from a sutra mound at Chishakuji, on show for the whole run.
The fan-shaped Lotus Sutra booklet
A National Treasure from Shitennoji in Osaka with the sutra written on fan-shaped pages; second period only, with the pages turned during the run.
The Yokawa sutra box
A National Treasure from Mount Hiei, dated 1031: a gilt and silvered box covered in a floral scroll pattern, shown for the whole run.
Koetsu and Sotatsu's lotus poem scroll
Hon'ami Koetsu's calligraphy of court poems brushed over Tawaraya Sotatsu's underpainting of lotuses, from Suntory's own collection.