
CLOSE-UP: DAY AFTER DAY
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MONK, poet, and sculptor Enku spent his life traveling across Japan, carving statues of Buddhist deities at each place he stayed. Largely forgoing high-quality timber, he used whatever wood was at hand, including stumps, building scraps, and offcuts from his own carvings. He is said to have made as many as 120,000 of his distinctively raw and rough-hewn statues, about five thousand of which survive; some, known as koppabutsu, or “scrap-wood Buddha,” are tiny, meant to be held in the palm of one’s hand. Enku’s engagement with the world and the substances it offers finds