A Pair of Japanese Stone Guardian Komainu and Shishi Lions

Edo period (1615-1868), hand carved stone, each seated on a rectangular base, with curls to their manes and raised tails, muscular legs, large eyes and wide ears, they sit at attention, one with its mouth opened and the other with its mouth closed.

Each 24 1/2 x 13 x 18 1/2 in.

Photograph of the consignor's great grandmother and grandmother at their home in Japan, and a photograph of her great grandfather produced by the Hastings studio in Boston, Massachusetts. The photographs are not included in this lot.

These guardian lions would originally have flanked the entrance path to a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple in Japan. This tradition dates back to the Heian period (794-1185 CE), where pairs of guardian figures were placed to ward off evil spirits from entering the temple and causing harm to the sacred deities inside. The guardian on the right has an open mouth, symbolically intoning the syllable "a", while the lion on the left has a closed mouth, indicating the syllable "un," together they speak the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet symbolizing the entirety of the cosmos.