Remaining Volumes of the Sutra of the Wise and the Foolish

A Sutra Written in Giant Letters

Most Buddhist scriptures copied in eighth-century Japan packed seventeen characters into every vertical line. The pair of scrolls kept at the Hakutsuru Museum of Fine Art does something different: each line carries only eleven to thirteen glyphs, every one of them brushed unusually large and confidently shaped. The effect is closer to a piece of monumental calligraphy than to a working text. This is the Kengukyō Zankan, the surviving portion of the Sutra of the Wise and the Foolish, better known by its nickname Daishōmu, or "Great Shōmu."

The scriptural text itself, the Kengukyō (also read Kengu-innen-kyō), gathers sixty-two chapters of Buddhist parables. Each one sets a wise course of action against a foolish one and follows the consequences across lifetimes, a literary form that made karmic cause and effect easy for lay audiences to grasp. The Hakutsuru holding preserves two scrolls of this text: a first scroll of 461 lines and a second of 503, copied during the Nara period in the eighth century.

The nickname is where the romance begins. Tradition holds that Emperor Shōmu, the ruler who ordered the casting of the Great Buddha at Tōdai-ji, copied these sutras in his own hand, and the oversized brushwork earned the name "Great Shōmu." Specialists are more cautious. The calligraphy is now generally credited to a master scribe of the imperial sutra-copying workshop, or possibly to a continental calligrapher who had settled in Japan. The imperial attribution is best treated as a treasured legend rather than fact.

Why It Became a National Treasure

Fragments of the Daishōmu are scattered across Japan, but only a handful of holdings survive in enough quantity to be designated National Treasures. There are four: a single scroll at Tōdai-ji in Nara, three scrolls held by the Maeda Ikutokukai foundation, one scroll at the Tokyo National Museum, and the two scrolls in Kobe. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Hakutsuru pair surpasses the others both in sheer length and in state of preservation, which is why it carries the designation it received on 26 May 1964.

The paper repays close attention. Ordinary sutra-copying of the period used a yellow hemp paper called ōmashi. The Daishōmu scribes chose something far more lavish: dabishi, a white paper made from the bast fiber of the spindle tree and then coated with gofun, a white pigment ground from calcined shells. The result is a luminous, almost ivory ground that throws the black characters into sharp relief. The name dabishi carries the word for cremation, and old tradition linked the paper to funerary ash or incense, though the documented material is the spindle tree.

One date invites a second glance. The Hakutsuru Museum first opened its doors on 26 May 1934. The scrolls it holds were designated a National Treasure on the very same calendar date thirty years later.

What to Look For

Look first at the individual character. Under magnification, viewers have noticed that the strokes were sometimes built up and gone over to make each letter read as deliberately broad and weighty, a labor that turns reading into a kind of slow visual performance. The ruled guide lines, drawn in faint ink, keep the giant glyphs marching in even columns.

Then step back and consider the company these scrolls have kept. From medieval times, collectors prized even the smallest scrap of Daishōmu, and a fragment was almost always pasted at the very front of a tekagami, an album of famous calligraphy assembled by the wealthy and powerful. To own a piece was a mark of cultural standing. The Kobe scrolls escaped that fate of being cut apart, which is part of why they matter so much.

Their journey is worth knowing as you stand before them. Originally housed in the ordination hall of Tōdai-ji, the scrolls left the temple and entered the collection of the Maeda lords of Kaga. A daughter of Maeda Toshitsune carried them into the Katsura-no-miya imperial household when she married, after which they passed through the hands of the Meiji statesman Inoue Kaoru before reaching the Hakutsuru Museum. Few sutra scrolls can claim a line of custodians that runs from a Nara temple through a daimyo house and an imperial family.

Around the Museum

The Hakutsuru Museum of Fine Art sits on the southern slopes of Mount Rokkō, in a quiet, well-heeled residential district above the city of Kobe. It was founded by Kanō Jihei, the seventh head of the Hakutsuru sake brewery, who wanted his collection of East Asian antiquities seen rather than hoarded. The castle-like main building, completed in the 1930s and now a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, is worth slow looking in its own right: crane motifs, the brewery's emblem, are tucked into the iron doors, the nail covers, and the painted ceilings.

The museum keeps an unusual rhythm. Rather than a permanent display, it opens for roughly three months each spring and autumn around a chosen theme, so the scrolls appear only in certain exhibitions. Anyone making the trip specifically to see them should check the current programme before setting out. The walk up from the station is steep but short, and the hillside setting gives wide views back toward Osaka Bay. The collection also includes a second National Treasure, the annotated Daihatsu-nehangyō-ge, and a separate annex devoted to antique Middle Eastern carpets.