Gold-Lettered Sutra of Samantabhadra on Dark Blue Paper

A Gold-Lettered Sutra Brushed by Two Taira Brothers

Behind the famous over-water halls of Itsukushima Shrine, in a fire-resistant storehouse beside the shrine office, rests a single scroll of dark indigo paper written entirely in gold. This is the Kan Fugen Kyō, the closing scripture of the Threefold Lotus Sutra. It was copied out in the early 1170s by Taira no Kiyomori, then the most powerful figure at the Japanese court, working alongside his younger half-brother Taira no Yorimori.

The scroll does not stand alone. It belongs to a set the two men dedicated to the shrine on Miyajima island: seven scrolls of the Lotus Sutra and this one volume of the Kan Fugen Kyō, every column brushed in gold on indigo. The set carries the formal designation "Lotus Sutra in Gold Characters on Indigo Paper, Seven Scrolls, with the Kan Fugen Kyō in One Scroll, joint brushwork of Taira no Kiyomori and Yorimori." The Kan Fugen Kyō scroll described here is the volume that completes the group.

The Kan Fugen Kyō, fully titled the Sutra on the Practice of Contemplating the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, was rendered into Chinese by the monk Dharmamitra by the year 441. In the reading codified by the Tiantai master Zhiyi, it closes the Threefold Lotus Sutra, following the eight-scroll Lotus Sutra and its opening text. Its subject is repentance. The sutra explains how to cleanse the faults of the six senses and how to contemplate Samantabhadra, who appears riding a white elephant with six tusks, and it is sometimes called simply the Sutra of Repentance. Its often-quoted instruction is to sit upright and contemplate the true nature of all things.

One Scroll, Two Hands

What sets this set apart from most copied scriptures is visible in the brushwork itself. Each scroll is a ryōhitsukyō, a "two-brush sutra." Kiyomori wrote the opening lines of every volume, and Yorimori took up the brush to complete the remaining text. The two brothers were joining themselves in a shared religious vow, binding their merit together through the act of copying. Records held by the Hiroshima prefectural authorities place the work between the ninth month of 1170 and the fourth month of 1172.

The materials match the seriousness of that vow. The paper was dyed deep indigo, ruled with fine silver lines to guide the columns, and inscribed in gold. The cover of each scroll bears a scrolling floral arabesque of the hōsōge type in gold and silver pigment, and the frontispiece carries a painting in gold paint, often a scene of Shakyamuni preaching or an image drawn from the meaning of the text. Sutras decorated in this manner, with characters and pictures laid down in gold, are known as kindeikyō, and this set is regarded as a representative Heian example of the form.

The set was named a National Treasure on 20 March 1954. A gilt-bronze sutra box that held the scrolls is registered together with them as an attached property. It is worth keeping the dedication separate in your mind from the shrine's other celebrated scriptures. The lavishly decorated Heike Nōkyō, offered by Kiyomori and his clan in 1164, is a different National Treasure, classified as painting rather than calligraphy. The gold-on-indigo set was a more personal undertaking by two brothers a few years later.

Time has thinned the group. The dedication originally numbered ten scrolls, comprising the full eight-scroll Lotus Sutra together with the opening Muryōgi-kyō and this closing Kan Fugen Kyō. The fourth Lotus scroll and the Muryōgi-kyō left the shrine long ago. Fragments of the lost Muryōgi-kyō survive in private and museum collections, where they are prized under the name "Itsukushima-gire," cuttings from Itsukushima.

What to Look For

When the scroll is on view, the first thing that registers is the contrast: gold characters catching the light against a field of near-black blue. The effect is quieter and more austere than the riot of color on the Heike Nōkyō, and it rewards slow looking. Move to the head of the scroll to find the frontispiece painting, where a fine gold line draws the figure of the Buddha and his listeners. The silver ruling between the columns of text is faint now but still legible if you look closely.

There is a human dimension here that no label fully captures. Somewhere near the start of the text, one brother's brush gave way to the other's. Knowing that the opening belongs to Kiyomori and the body to Yorimori turns a beautiful object into a record of two specific people, bound by blood and by a shared act of devotion, at the height of their family's fortunes and only a decade before its fall.

Because the sutra concerns repentance and the contemplation of Samantabhadra, it carried a particular weight for the people who commissioned it. Reading the scroll as an offering, rather than only as an artwork, brings its purpose closer.

Visiting Miyajima and the Treasure Hall

Itsukushima Shrine sits on Miyajima, an island off the coast of Hiroshima. Reach it by ferry from Miyajimaguchi, a crossing of about ten minutes; the JR ferry passes close to the great vermilion torii that rises from the sea. From the Miyajima pier the shrine is a walk of roughly fifteen minutes along the waterfront.

The shrine's Treasure Hall stands just past the exit of the main shrine and keeps the gold-on-indigo tradition in front of visitors year round, though usually through a faithful reproduction rather than the fragile original. The actual scrolls appear at the annual exhibition of selected treasures, held around October and November in the shrine's separate storage building beside the shrine office. This particular sutra is shown comparatively often, with a few volumes rotated out for display most years. Anyone hoping to see the original should check the shrine's current schedule before traveling.

The Treasure Hall opens daily from 8:00 to 17:00, with admission of 300 yen for adults, 200 yen for high school students, and 100 yen for younger children. A combined ticket covering the shrine, the Treasure Hall, and the nearby Senjōkaku pavilion offers good value for a half day on the island. Close at hand are the temple Daiganji, the five-story pagoda, and the ropeway up Mount Misen for those with time to spare.