Ancient Sacred Treasures of Itsukushima Shrine

A Court Wardrobe and Its Weaponry, Made in the 1180s

On the twentieth day of the third month of Juei 2 (1183), a shrine official named Saeki Kagehiro put his name and the date on a vermilion-lacquered box built to hold a ceremonial sword. That signed box still exists, together with a second sword box and two small legged chests carrying the same maker's mark. They belong to a larger group of objects handed down at Itsukushima Shrine, on the island of Miyajima in the Seto Inland Sea off the Hiroshima coast. Together the group is known as the Itsukushima Shrine Ancient Sacred Treasures.

The collection joins two sides of late-Heian aristocratic life: the formal dress of a court noble and the gear of a court warrior. A complete set of male court costume survives, with a sleeveless outer jacket (hanpi), an inner robe, a belt set with worked stone (sekitai), a flat braided cord for suspending a sword (hirao), a wooden ritual baton (shaku), and three cypress-slat fans (hiōgi). Beside the clothing lie the arms: two ornamental long swords, a sword scabbard, a flat quiver, and eleven arrows.

From Imperial Pilgrimage to National Treasure

For a long time these objects were spoken of as the personal effects of the boy emperor Antoku, who drowned with the Taira clan at the battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. Documents kept by the Nosaka family, the shrine's hereditary priests, point elsewhere. Across roughly a decade spanning the Jōan, Angen, and Jishō eras, the retired emperors Go-Shirakawa and Takakura made repeated pilgrimages to Itsukushima, and sacred offerings were presented on each occasion. A record from Jōan 4 (1174) notes the dedication of a full set of court dress. Whether the surviving garments are that very set cannot now be proven, but the documentary trail places the collection among the offerings made to the shrine's four sanctuaries: Ōmiya, Naka-go-mae, Wakamiya, and Marōdo-no-miya.

The set was designated a National Treasure on 20 March 1954, under the cultural property law passed after the Second World War. Its importance rests on rarity and completeness. Textiles and lacquer from the twelfth century rarely survive in any quantity, and a court wardrobe kept together with its matching weaponry and storage boxes is rarer still. The dated inscriptions on the lacquer boxes hand researchers a fixed reference point for studying the workshop practices of the age.

The inscription date repays a second look. Saeki Kagehiro finished the boxes in the third month of 1183. By the seventh month of that same year the Taira had abandoned the capital, taking the child emperor with them. These objects were made on the edge of the war that would destroy the family that had raised the shrine to prominence.

What to Look For in the Lacquer and the Cloth

The most accomplished pieces are the two ornamental swords and the scabbard. Their surfaces combine raden, the inlay of cut shell that flashes at shifting angles, with a ground of heijin, in which fine metal dust is scattered across the lacquer to produce a soft shimmer. One sword carries an imaginary composite flower pattern called hōsōge; the scabbard is worked with a pair of facing phoenixes.

The boxes and chests show a quieter craft. Both sword boxes are finished in deep vermilion lacquer. The two small legged chests, or karabitsu, are decorated with cranes pecking at pine, a pairing read at the time as a wish for long life.

Look closely at the costume as well. The cypress fans were not for cooling but markers of rank, their thin wooden slats once painted and threaded with cord. The stone-set belt and the braided sword cord reveal how completely a noble's appearance was governed by rule, down to the material of a single fitting.

Seeing the Treasures in Person

A practical word for visitors: the Ancient Sacred Treasures are seldom on view. Itsukushima Shrine runs a Treasure Hall (Hōmotsukan) near the end of the shrine route, open daily from 8:00 to 17:00, with admission around 300 yen for adults. It shows a rotating selection of the shrine's holdings, including a reproduction of the celebrated Heike Nōkyō sutras, but the National Treasure objects themselves are generally not displayed there.

The originals appear only at intervals, most often at a separate storehouse during autumn special exhibitions, or on loan to major museums. In recent years pieces from this collection have traveled to the Tokyo, Kyoto, and Kyushu national museums. Anyone hoping to see them should check current exhibition schedules before building a trip around them.

Even so, the setting alone justifies the journey. Itsukushima Shrine, built out over a tidal flat so that its vermilion halls seem to float at high water, was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1996. Reaching it means a short ferry from Miyajimaguchi, then a walk along the shore past the great offshore torii gate.