@article{oai:tobunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00006516,
 author = {宮, 次男 and Miya, Tsugio},
 issue = {282},
 journal = {美術研究, The bijutsu kenkyu : the journal of art studies},
 month = {Dec},
 note = {A painting composed of Chinese characters as a text of a certain Buddhist scripture in the shape of a pagoda placed in the center of the picture and surrounded by illustrations is called Hōtō Mandara (Litarally, Pagoda Mandala) or Moji Tō Mandara (Literally, Letter Pagoda Mandala) in Japanese.
     Hitherto, the set of the Hōtō Mandara of the Chūsonji based on Konkō-saishōō-kyō (Skt. Suvarṇaprabhasottomarāja-sūtra) and the set of the Hōtō Mandara of Danzan Shrine based on the Lotus Sutra are the best Known surviving mediaevel examples. The author published his study on these two sets of works in Nos. 221 to 223 of the Bijutsu Kenkyu and No. 72 of the Bukkyō Geijutsu. After this study, he had an opportunity to investigate the Hōtō Mandara which was formerly owned by the Hōryūji and is now in the Ryūhonji, Kyoto. He here discusses the results of the investigation and the study of this work.
     The set of the Hōtō Mandara owned by the Ryūhonji is composed of eight hanging sorolls of dark blue paper, each of which contains a picture of a pagoda formed by the gold characters covering one of the eight volumes of the Lotus Sutra and illustrations around it. The text starts from the top of the pagoda and ends at the bottom of the staircase of its podium. The number of the is varies with the hanging scroll. They range from seven to twenty-one. Each illustration has a title, a short passage taken from the text of the volume. The illustrations are painted chiefly in gold and silver. Vermilion pigment is added to the lips of the deities and people, and details of the pictures are finished with fine ink lines. The colour contrast of the pictures including the pagoda against the dark blue background is remarkable.
     If we compare the Ryūhonji version with the Danzan Shrine version of the same subject, the former has a much more brilliant colour effect because the gold pigment of the latter is of much less pure quality. The number of the pictures in each scroll of the Ryūhonji version is about half the number of the Danzan Shrine version. This fact results in a somewhat incomplete visualization of the contents of the sutra. But at the same time, the Ryūhonji version has a more refined pictorial composition as a whole, a difference that seems to indicate that the Ryūhonji version has straightforwardness, a characteristic in common with the arts of the Kamakura Period. This work thus is known to date from the Kamakura Period. And the author regards this work to be of the relatively early part of the period or of the middle thirteenth century. For there still remain some elements very close to the late Heian examples of sutra frontispieces painted on dark blue paper.},
 pages = {1--25},
 title = {立本寺蔵　妙法蓮華経金字宝塔曼陀羅図について},
 year = {1972}
}