Movie Screening

Carving the Divine
Buddhist Sculptors of Japan

7PM - 8:45PM, Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Murasaki Hall at The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles
(5700 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036)

Admission FREE
Please register HERE

Carving the Divine (2020, 94 mins) is a documentary film that offers a rare look into a 1400-year-old Buddhist woodcarving tradition and the practitioners struggling to preserve its legacy in a rapidly changing Japan. Determined to pass his craft down to future generations, Master Koun Seki, the former apprentice of renowned Busshi, Kourin Saito, interviews a candidate applying to be his new apprentice. Quickly though, we discover this apprenticeship and the Busshi’s life to be far less glamorous, and much more austere, than we (or the Candidate) would’ve likely imagined.

Once Master Seki makes his selection, we’re taken on a trip through a guild culture unlike anything existing today in The West: From the growing pains of a novice apprentice, to the entire guild working together as one body to create breathtaking works of art, to the monkish practice of the famed, Grand Master Saito himself, alone on his quest to “leave nothing but great works behind.”

What’s more, we’re granted unprecedented access into the secret rights of Shingon (True Word) Buddhism. And faced with the devastation of the Tōhoku Tsunami, we’re given profound insight into the Busshi’s significance within the Japanese psyche, and the nature of human perseverance through suffering.

Carving the Divine has become the official selection for 33 film festivals, showing in a total of 22 countries, and won awards at 13 festivals worldwide, such as winning the Best Director Award of a Foreign Language Documentary at World Cinema Milan and premiering at the famous Raindance Film Festival in London.

Yujiro Seki, Director

Born and raised in Japan, Yujiro Seki discovered his passion for film-making when he was in high school. Through making his first feature film, Sokonashi Deka (The Enigmatic Detective), he became enamored with the imaginative possibilities of cinema and vowed to master the art through study in the United States. Despite the fact that starting a new life in a new country was a challenge in itself, Seki earned a BA in Film from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a short film, Sashimi Taco, for his senior, honors thesis. Following his graduation, Seki moved to Los Angeles to work as a director of the video department for Intermarket Design, and as a film instructor at Montecito Fine Arts College of Design. After attaining permanent U.S. residency, Seki began studying full time in the Cinematography program at UCLA Extension. Upon graduating from that program, he embarked on the journey of making his feature documentary project, Carving the Divine: Buddhist Sculptors of Japan.

[IMDB] Yujiro Seki

Related Programs

[Exhibition] Manifesting Icons: The Materials and Making of Buddhist Visual Culture in Asia