Winner of the 2006 Shimada Prize from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, Kyoto, Japan Winner of the 2006 John Whitney Hall Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies Chikubushima , a sacred island north of the ancient capital of Kyoto, attracted the attention of Japan's rulers in the Momoyama period (1568-1615) and became a repository of their art, including a lavishly decorated building dedicated to the worship of Benzaiten. In this meticulous and lucid study, Andrew Watsky keenly illustrates how private belief and political ambition influenced artistic production at the intersection of institutional Buddhism and Shinto during this tumultuous period of rapid and radical political, social, and aesthetic changes. He offers substantial conclusions not only about this specific site, but also, more broadly, about the nature of art production in Japan and how perceptions of the sacred shaped the concerns and actions of the secular rulers. The patrons of the island included the dominant political figures of the time: the late sixteenth-century ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) who supported numerous projects at the apogee of his power and his heir Hideyori (1593-1615), as well as their rival and eventual successor to national hegemony, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616). After Hideyoshi's death, the Toyotomi clan struggled to retain their power and sought new opportunities to position themselves as chief condui