Jūichimen Kannon

Jūichimen Kannon (十一面観音) is the eleven-headed Esoteric form of Kannon. The canonical stack reads as three benevolent faces forward, three wrathful at the sides, three smiling at the rear, one Buddha-form crown, and one rear-facing laughing head. Within the Six Kannon programme, Jūichimen is assigned to the realm of asuras. The body is canonically two-armed, distinguishing the form from Senju at the arm count even when both share the eleven-headed stack.

Iconography

The eleven-head stack is the diagnostic. The arrangement, reading from the principal face outward and around:

• Front three — benevolent (shōmen), the principal face plus two flanking, calm.
• Right three — wrathful (kongōmen), bared teeth or fang readings.
• Left three — smiling (shōmen in a different reading register), broad smile.
• Rear one — laughing face (bōnyū-mukomen), the most distinctive of the eleven; carries an iconographic charge of the figure’s omnidirectional vision.
• Crown one — Buddha-form face atop the stack; canonically Amida in the Japanese reception.

The body is canonically two-armed. Right hand in varada (gift-giving, palm-out and downward); left hand holds a water-vase (kundikā) with a lotus stem rising from it. Standing posture is canonical; seated forms exist but are the minority reading.

The expanded Esoteric programmes — chiefly the late-Heian and Kamakura ritual cycles — extend the arm count to four, six, or eight. In these expanded forms the eleven-head stack remains the primary diagnostic; the additional arms hold the canonical Esoteric implement set (lotus, vajra, jewel, lasso, sūtra) and do not displace the head-count diagnostic.

Within the Esoteric programme

Jūichimen Kannon is the variant assigned to the realm of asuras in the Six Kannon programme. The eleven-head reading is read doctrinally as the figure’s reach into the eleven bhūmi of bodhisattva attainment — a doctrinal frame Bogel 2009 traces against the Heian Mikkyō image programmes.

In the collections

• Hokke-ji (Nara) — Jūichimen Kannon Ritsuzō, Heian period (early 9th c.), National Treasure. The canonical Heian anchor.
• Murō-ji (Nara) — Jūichimen Kannon Ritsuzō, Heian period (9th c.), National Treasure. Sherry Fowler’s Murō-ji is the standard scholarly reading.
• Dōgan-ji (Shiga) — Jūichimen Kannon Ritsuzō, Heian period, National Treasure.
• Shōrin-ji (Nara) — Jūichimen Kannon Ritsuzō, Heian period, National Treasure.
• Kōgen-ji (Shiga) — Jūichimen Kannon Ritsuzō, Heian period, National Treasure (the Watanabe-Kōgen).
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art — multiple Jūichimen holdings across the Asian Art collection.

How to read in the field

The eleven-head stack is the primary diagnostic. The two-arm count distinguishes Jūichimen from Senju (forty-two-armed) when both share the stack. The water-vase and lotus pair confirms the canonical reading; the varada mudra in the right hand is the secondary anchor.

Related

• Figures: Sho Kannon, Senju Kannon, Nyoirin Kannon, Bato Kannon

Further works

Sources

1. [1] ↵ — Cynthea J. Bogel, With a Single Glance: Buddhist Icon and Early Mikkyō Vision (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009) print reference

   Heian Esoteric programme placement; the eleven-head stack as iconographic system.

2. [2] ↵ — E. Dale Saunders, Mudrā (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press / Bollingen Foundation, 1960) print reference

   *Varada* and water-vase-holding gestures.

3. [3] ↵ — Hisashi Mōri, Sculpture of the Kamakura Period (Tokyo: Heibonsha / New York: Weatherhill, 1974) print reference

   The Kamakura Jūichimen sculptural record; the eleven-head stack as preserved across the Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji rebuilding programmes.