There are two great images of this Buddha statue, one from 1930 by Kawase Hasui and another from ~1950 by Gihachiro Okuyama. The Kawase Hasui (first below) is likely the finer but I prefer the glow of Okuyama’s (which, conveniently, was a good deal cheaper and easier to locate). The Buddha itself has a fine history. It was cast ~1250 after the destruction of a wooden predecessor in a storm. It was at multiple points housed in temples that were also washed away in storms so following a 1498 tsunami it was left to breath free.

Other interests aside, I have a slight nostalgia connection to this piece in that the Buddha of Kamakura is mentioned in the epigraph of the opening chapter of one my favorite childhood novels, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim:

I’ve learned today that these lines are an excerpt from a poem of his from the collection The Five Nations. I put it in full below.