Collaborative Painting of Sixteen Arhats late 1870s-early 1880s Suzuki Hyakunen For this collaboration, sixteen artists depicted one each of the Sixteen Arhats (Japanese: Jroku Rakan), a group of Buddhist saints who reject all worldly passions and exist in various realms of the Buddhist world in order to promulgate the so-called Just Law—the true teachings of the Buddha, which are inherently prone to degeneration over time. The sixteen artists were all key players in painting circles in the city of Kyoto in the 1880s. They include major figues like Mori Kansai, who, after the death of the leading painter Shiokawa Bunrin (1808-1877), stood at the center of Kyoto painting circles as the head of the Kyoto painting group Jounsha, many of whose members can also be found among the collaborators. The late Bunrin’s own son, Ichid, painted the partially hidden figure in profile at middle left. Another particularly important collaborator on this work, and along with Mori Kansai the oldest