The Sculpture Rooms in the Kyoto National Museum are usually filled with lots of Buddhas that are sometimes hard to understand. Sometimes, however, we have special exhibitions of other kinds of sculptures, such as animal sculptures.
Today let's talk about one kind of animal sculpture that almost everyone loves, the lion-dogs.
Lion-dogs are the guardians that can be seen outside the gates of many Japanese shrines. Such lion-dogs are generally made of stone, but the sculptures we are going to talk about today are made of wood. Later, when the lion-dogs were placed outside, they began to be made of stone, in order to better withstand the elements. Take a look at the lion dogs above. They look more like wild beasts than the dogs we keep as pets.