Nara

This Tang dynasty manuscript (7th–8th century) is the oldest surviving copy of Volume 6 of the Shishuo Xinshu (Shishuo Xinyu), a celebrated Chinese anecdote collection. Designated as a National Treasure, this fragment features elegant Tang calligraphy, Heian-period reading marks, and esoteric Buddhist texts on the verso — a testament to over a millennium of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange.

Explore the Nagato Province Coin-Casting Artifacts, Important Cultural Properties from Japan's Nara period. These coin molds, crucibles, and bellows nozzles from the Nagato Mint reveal the origins of Wadō Kaichin, Japan's first official currency.

At Kobe's Hakutsuru Museum, the National Treasure Daishomu is two Nara-period scrolls of the Sutra of the Wise and the Foolish, brushed in unusually large script.

A National Treasure at Kobe's Hakutsuru Museum: seventy-one scrolls of Nirvana Sutra commentary, fifty-four copied in Tang China, the rest later Japanese additions.