A glimpse into the tradition.
Hotei begins with a human-shaped story rather than the birth of a kami. The Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies him with Budai, a cheerful Chinese monk said to have wandered the region around Mount Siming in southern China in the late ninth to early tenth century. His most recognizable possession was a patched cloth bag holding his few belongings. Kokugakuin University gives the underlying monk’s name as Qì-cĭ, rendered Kaishi in Japanese, and places him in the Later Liang period. These traditions make Hotei a figure whose religious career grew around the memory and legend of an eccentric monk rather than around a Japanese creation myth.
A second layer linked the monk with Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. The Met describes Hotei as believed to be an avatar or manifestation of Maitreya, while a 1616 painting by Kano Takanobu calls him a popular figure in the Zen pantheon and again notes his recognition as Miroku, the Japanese name for Maitreya. That association helps explain why Hotei can appear in Zen painting while also looking strikingly informal: shaven head, exposed belly, broad smile, simple robes, staff, and large sack rather than a jeweled crown or solemn throne. The contrast between humble appearance and transcendent identification is part of his appeal.
Japan then gave Hotei another life inside the Shichifukujin. Kokugakuin says his rotund, contented demeanor helped bring him into the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, while the Met notes that he entered Chinese and Japanese folklore and became one of the seven. By the Edo period, painters such as Ogata Kōrin could treat him playfully, and Hotei could stand beside Ebisu, Daikoku, Benzaiten, Bishamonten, Fukurokuju, and Jurōjin in festive images of luck. He therefore crosses several categories at once: remembered monk, legendary holy man, Maitreya manifestation, Zen iconographic subject, and popular Japanese fortune figure.