holy beings 聖人 seijin

The Seven Gods of Fortune (shichi fukujin) are a symbol of religious striving for this world’s well-being. They emerged together with bourgeois urban culture in the late Middle Ages and gained their well-known iconographic form in the Edo period (1603-1868). Arhats (jap. arakan or rakan) are Buddhist saints who are usually worshipped in groups. In Japan, the groups of sixteen arhats and 500 arhats are the most popular, but there are also groups of four, eighteen, a thousand or 1500 arhats. Their most important characteristic is that they remain physically in the world after Buddha’s death in order to spread his teachings correctly.