ONLINE LECTURE

How Dragons and Bells Make Rain in Japan

6:30 - 7:45 pm (PST), Wednesday, November 4, 2026
ONLINE Zoom Webinar

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This program will not be recorded

For centuries, humans have sought supernatural assistance for relief from droughts and floods. In Japan, tenth-century records show that dragons were enlisted in imperial rainmaking rituals. Buddhist texts and Asian folklore are ripe with tales of dragon kings who dwell in an undersea palace and have control over storms. These dragons also have a legendary love of treasure and desire for bells. While few rainmaking rituals are held today, in the past people took various actions to attract the attention of the dragon to encourage rain. In this talk we will take a rare tour of long-forgotten strategies rural communities developed that employed large temple bells beyond their sound-making, including soaking them in water or parading floats of bells and other water-related themes through the streets to make rain.

LECTURER

Sherry Fowler

Sherry Fowler is Professor of Japanese Art History at the University of Kansas. She has a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles. At present, she is serving as President of the Japanese Art History Forum (JAHF). She published the books Buddhist Bells and Dragons: Under and Over Water, In and Out of Japan, University of Hawaiʻi Press (2025), Accounts and Images of Six Kannon in Japan (2016), Murōji: Rearranging Art and History at a Japanese Buddhist Temple (2005), and over twenty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Fowler’s research interests include pre-modern Japanese sculpture, prints, metalwork, foreign interactions with Japanese art, pilgrimage, issues of collecting, ritual, and tattoos. Her article, “From Christian Church to Buddhist Temple: The Remarkable Conversion of the 1577 Nanbanji Bell at Shunkōin in Japan,” on Buddhist/Christian exchanges in sixteenth-century Kyoto appeared in Artibus Asiae in 2026. She is currently researching the religious dimensions of the Japanese dragon tattoo. In 2026 she was a Senior Visiting Scholar at Stanford University and is a member of the team working on the exhibition Mediating the Dharma, sponsored by the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University, which will open in 2027.

Related Exhibition

Ai: Rain Drawings in Natural Indigo (September 30, 2026 - January 23, 2027)