From Vishwakarma to Lu Ban to Shōtoku Taishi

Drawing on early Tokugawa carpentry manuals, Bertozzi examines how Japanese builders wove Indian and Chinese deities into their own pantheon of craft lore. The Hindu god Vishwakarma and the Chinese master Lu Ban, both long associated with sacred architecture, were reimagined within Buddhist cosmologies and situated alongside figures such as Shōtoku Taishi . Their transmission illustrates the global networks of mythology and cosmology through which carpenters conceptualised construction not simply as human creation, but as the manifestation of universal order. In doing so, Tokugawa carpenters embedded their work within expansive, transregional traditions that bridged India, China, and Japan.