Description
Known as Hanshan and Shide, these two figures reportedly lived on the sacred Mount Tiantai in ancient China. Hanshan, shown on the left, lived alone in a cave and wrote poetry. Shide, shown holding a broom, worked as a kitchen helper at a nearby Zen temple. Their erratic and maniacal behavior came to be regarded as a sign of profound spiritual wisdom among Zen monks in China and Japan.
Data source
ColBase
"ColBase: Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan" is a service that enables a multi-database search of the collections in the four national museums (To...
Contents holder/Provider
Aggregator
National Institutes for Cultural Heritage
The National Institutes for Cultural Heritage (NICH) comprise four National Museums (Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum, and Kyushu National Museum) and two National Research Institutes for Cultural Properties (Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, and Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties), as well as the International Research Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (IRCI) in Sakai City, for a total of seven institutions.
Last updated
July 20, 2026