The Ōkagami and the Six-Volume Copy Kept in Aichi
Two old men settle in at the back of a Buddhist sermon hall and begin to talk. One says he is about 190 years old; the other, around 180. Between them they claim to have outlived fourteen emperors, and a young samurai in the audience keeps cutting in with sharp questions. This staged conversation opens the Ōkagami, "The Great Mirror," a history of the Japanese court written in flowing vernacular Japanese during the late Heian period, most likely the early twelfth century. The book follows the years 850 to 1025 and circles around one subject above all: the rise of the Fujiwara family and the towering power of the regent Fujiwara no Michinaga.
The cultural property registered here is not the text in the abstract. It is one physical witness to it: a copy in six fascicles, the so-called six-volume version, held privately in Aichi Prefecture and designated an Important Cultural Property on March 31, 1953. Specialists call it the Tōshō-bon, after the family that long kept it.
A word of background for readers outside Japan. Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028) was the dominant figure of his age, a court noble who married four daughters into the imperial line and ruled in all but name through the regency system that defined Heian politics. The Ōkagami is the first of four linked works later grouped as the shikyō, the "four mirrors," because each was imagined as a mirror held up to reflect the past.
Why an Old Copy Matters
Recopied by hand for centuries, the Ōkagami did not stay fixed. Surviving manuscripts fall into three broad groups, labeled by length: three-fascicle, six-fascicle, and eight-fascicle versions. The differences run deeper than how the pages were bundled. Some copies carry fewer episodes and shorter passages, while later "vulgate" copies had been padded out with additions.
The Tōshō-bon belongs to the older, leaner family of texts that scholars call the kohon line. Copies of this kind are valued because they preserve a state of the work closer to what its earliest readers would have known. For anyone trying to reconstruct what the author actually wrote, such a manuscript is primary evidence rather than a late echo.
Its age is itself a small puzzle. The national cultural-property database records the manuscript as a work of the Heian period, while the specialists who prepared its 1953 facsimile described it instead as an old copy of the Kamakura period. Either reading places it among the early surviving copies, which is why it was reproduced in full the very year it was designated. The 1953 photographic facsimile, issued in six volumes by the Kichō Kotenseki Kankōkai, carries commentary by scholars including Yamagishi Tokuhei, Ōta Shōjirō, and Yamada Tadao.
Reading the Mirror
What has kept the Ōkagami alive is its voice rather than its chronology. The annals-and-biographies format, borrowed from Chinese official histories and known as kiden-tai, was an unusual choice for a book written in kana. The author used it to set portraits of individual ministers side by side, and the result is gossipy, pointed, at times cruel.
One celebrated passage describes how Fujiwara no Michikane coaxed the young Emperor Kazan into renouncing the throne and taking Buddhist vows, then slipped away before he had to follow through himself. Another lingers over the bitter rivalry between the brothers Kanemichi and Kaneie. Michinaga dominates the closing fascicles, and the narrator's admiration comes mixed with irony about the hunger for power.
Stand in front of the actual manuscript and you would see columns of brush-written kana, the script of a court that prized calligraphy as highly as content. That direct encounter is rare, since the copy is in private hands and not on public display. The text itself is anything but rare. It is among the most widely taught classics in Japan, easy to find in annotated modern editions, and the 1953 facsimile has been digitized by the National Diet Library.
Where to Meet the Heian Court in Aichi
The manuscript lives in Aichi, yet the world it describes is the imperial capital at Kyoto. To get close to that world without leaving Nagoya, the strongest single destination is the pairing of the Tokugawa Art Museum and the adjacent Hōsa Bunko in the Higashi ward.
The Hōsa Bunko grew out of the library of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa house and holds well over a hundred thousand classical Japanese and Chinese books. Its reading room is open to the public, and its gallery rotates displays on the learning and culture of the warrior class. Next door, the Tokugawa Art Museum keeps the National Treasure Genji Monogatari Emaki, the illustrated Tale of Genji handscrolls, the most celebrated surviving image of Heian aristocratic life.
Both sit beside the Tokugaen garden. The simplest approach is to ride the JR Chūō Line to Ōzone Station and walk about ten minutes south, or to take Nagoya's Meguru sightseeing loop bus to the stop for the Tokugaen, Tokugawa Art Museum, and Hōsa Bunko. Hours and exhibition schedules shift through the year, so checking the day's program before you set out is wise.
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Q&A
- Is the Ōkagami a true history or a story?
- It is something of both. The book records real emperors, ministers, and datable events between 850 and 1025, but frames them as the reminiscences of two fictional centenarians, complete with dialogue and commentary. Japanese scholarship classes it as a "historical tale," rekishi monogatari, rather than an official history.
- Can I see this manuscript in person?
- Not easily. The designated copy is privately owned and is not on regular public display. The text is simple to read in modern annotated editions, and the 1953 facsimile can be viewed through the National Diet Library Digital Collections.
- Why is it called a "mirror"?
- In this tradition a history was imagined as a mirror that reflects the past clearly for the present. The Ōkagami is the first of four such works, the shikyō or "four mirrors," followed by the Imakagami, the Mizukagami, and the Masukagami.
- Who wrote it?
- The author is unknown. The names proposed over the centuries are all men close to the regents' house or to the Murakami Genji lineage. Recent opinion leans toward Minamoto no Akifusa, though the question stays open.
- What does "six-fascicle copy" mean, and is it complete?
- It refers to how the work was divided when bound, here into six volumes. Other copies survive in three-volume and eight-volume arrangements. This one belongs to the older textual line, which carries somewhat fewer episodes than the later expanded versions.
Basic Information
| Name | Ōkagami (The Great Mirror), six-fascicle copy |
|---|---|
| Designation | Important Cultural Property (calligraphy and classical texts) |
| Date of designation | March 31, 1953 |
| Number | 6 fascicles |
| Period of the copy | Heian (national database); described as a Kamakura-period old copy in the 1953 facsimile commentary |
| Location | Aichi Prefecture |
| Owner | Private |
| Public access | Not on public display |
| Original text | Composed in the late Heian period; narrates the years 850 to 1025 |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs (Ōkagami)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/201/8210
- Tōshō-bon Ōkagami, vol. 1 (National Diet Library Digital Collections)
- https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/2467737
- Ōkagami, History of Japanese Classical Literature through Books (National Institute of Japanese Literature)
- https://www.nijl.ac.jp/etenji/bungakushi/contents/detail/detail02-02_012.html
- Nagoya City Hōsa Bunko (official site)
- https://housa.city.nagoya.jp/
- Nagoya City Hōsa Bunko (Nagoya City Museum guide)
- https://www.museum.city.nagoya.jp/hosa/index.html
Last verified: 2026.06.13