Plotting the Prince traces the development of conceptual maps of the world created through the telling of stories about Prince Shotoku (573?-622?), an eminent statesman who is credited with founding Buddhism in Japan. It analyzes his place in the sacred landscape and the material relics of the cult of personality dedicated to him, focusing on the art created from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. The book asks not only who Shotoku was, but also how images of his life served the needs of devotees in early medieval Japan.

Even today Shotoku evokes images of a half-real, half-mythical...