Fudō Myō-o: The Fire Keeper
The first from the west in the northern quadrant is the acolyte Acala (不動使者). In his left hand he grasps a noose and in his right hand he holds a sword. He is seated in the half-lotus position.
—Amoghapāśakalparāja Sūtra, 707-709 CE
Fudo Myo-o was among the most venerated deities of Edo-period Japan, at the same time that traditional tattooing was undergoing a pivotal evolution. Fudo-Myo-o is the Japanese name for the Indian god, Acala अचल. No longer present in the Indian religious canon, Acala gained prominence via the transmission of Indian Buddhism to Tibet and East Asia.
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Acala is known as Candarasona and was considered the messenger of Buddha Vairocana. In East Asian Buddhism, Fudo Myo-o is considered a wrathful guardian of the Dharma and one of the five wisdom kings (vidyārāja). He is especially venerated in Japan, where he is among the most significant of Buddhist deities.
The transmission of Acala from India to East Asia is likely traced through the famed translator, Amoghavajra. His translations of six Sanskrit texts into Chinese are texts devoted to the worship of Acala. Thus, it seems that Acala left the Indian cultural context sometime in the 8th-9th centuries in the stream of transmission to East Asia.
Fudo Myo-o appears in the likeness of familiar deities, such as Shiva and the Tibetan depiction of Mahakala. We can also clearly see that Fudo Myo-o is an expression of the Vedic god of fire, Agni. Bernard Faure, a scholar of East Asian Buddhism, points to another Shiva-like deity, Trailokyavijaya, as the most likely prototype of Fudo Myo-o, though he also notes the Tibetan deity Vajrapani. It would seem that Fudo Myo-o is a composite image of all the aforementioned archetypes. He embodies the wrathful nature of Mahakala, the guardian nature of Vajrapani, the destructive quality and blue skin of Shiva, and the transformative fire of Agni. In Shugendo, Fudo Myo-o is the deity associated with fire rituals, confirming his status in more or less Vedic terms as a form of Agni.
Fudo Myo-o is surrounded by the flames of transformation. In his right hand, he holds a sword that cuts through ignorance and the three mental poisons. In his left hand, he holds a noose which catches demons and evil spirits. One of his eyes looks above to Heaven and the other below to the Earth. Fudo Myo-o destroys the ills of un-enlightenment, protects the sacred dharma, and transforms poison into nectar.