Abstract
In an earlier publication I reported briefly on the irreparable damage caused to the Hōryūji Kondō by the fire of January, 1949. After the almost total destruction of the great series of mural paintings that had been preserved there since the eighth century, there is a melancholy timeliness in collecting the last studies made by Japanese on their once priceless National Treasure. I continue, therefore, with a summary of several publications on the Hōryūji frescoes that have appeared in Japan since the beginning of the war: three articles by Tanaka, Kobayashi, and Sawa, and a book by Haruyama. Since the last, published in 1947, has not been long in my possession, I have not attempted so far to read more than the author's final chapter of “conclusions,” and to check his identifications of the controversial subjects of the Kondō panels. The book has been praised by Sawa as epoch-making because of the exceptionally fine illumination under which the author's study of the paintings was made. It seems a work as comprehensive in purpose as the fine monograph published in 1932 by Naitō, for acquaintance with which Western readers owe so much to the expert translation by Acker and Rowland.
