This Waseda University Grant for Special Research Projects (for Newly-Hired Faculty) contributed financial support toward my ongoing research on fourteenth-century Japanese didactic paintings. This academic year, the research resulted in an article, tentatively entitled “The Materiality of a Promise: Interworldly Contracts in Medieval Buddhist Promotional Campaign Imagery,” forthcoming in the next special issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (JJRS). I also co-edited the special issue (JJRS 45:2), tentatively entitled Modest Materialities: The Social Lives and Afterlives of Sacred Things in Japan, with Benedetta Lomi (Bristol University). Other authors include Fabio Gygi (SOAS University of London), Benedetta Lomi, Ouchi Fumi (Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University), David Quinter (University of Alberta), and Steven Trenson (Waseda University). This grant, which also funded archival research that is not yet reflected in a publication, supported groundwork for a future monograph on fourteenth-century Japanese paintings that were created for promotional and fund-raising purposes.