Important cultural property

A late sword guard by Tsuchiya Yasuchika, signed Tōu. In pierced suaka copper, drying fishing nets meet a flight of plovers, touched with his rubbed gold inlay.

Hosokawa Family Documents at Tokyo's Eisei Bunko: the 2013 designation of 266 papers holds 58 Oda Nobunaga letters; a 2025 addition raised the total to 9,612.

A Korean lacquer box, its black lid covered in a peony scroll of thick mother-of-pearl, a representative example of Joseon inlay brought to Japan by Ouchi trade.

Seven matched gold fittings of peonies and lions, attributed to Goto Yujo, mounted on a guardless short-sword scabbard assembled for the Kaga Maeda house in 1649.

A bokuseki scroll at the Tokyo National Museum: a verse brushed by the Southern Song Zen monk Beijian Jujian in a Suzhou pavilion in 1229, an early tea scroll.

A fragment of the Faju Piyu Jing copied in 4th-century China and dated to 359 CE by its colophon, among the oldest dated Chinese Buddhist manuscripts. Held in Tokyo.

Chinese poems and prose by Fujiwara no Tadamichi, the late-Heian chancellor. Copied in 1183 as war neared Kyoto, this early album is a key witness to his writing.

Volume 197 of the Hossō Ruirin, a Heian legal encyclopedia once said to fill over 200 volumes. This Kanazawa Bunko copy, made in 1304, is an Important Cultural Property.

Discover the Warikōdai Chawan, a 16th-century Korean tea bowl with a daringly cross-cut foot ring, designated an Important Cultural Property and housed at the Ebara Hatakeyama Museum in Shirokanedai, Tokyo. A masterpiece beloved by industrialist-tea master Hatakeyama Sokuō.

Explore the Important Cultural Property 'Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki (Kōan Version)' at the Tokyo National Museum — eight surviving painted scenes from a 1278 illustrated handscroll depicting the life, exile, and deification of Sugawara no Michizane, Japan's beloved patron deity of scholarship.

Discover "Old Monkey" (Rōen), a remarkable wood sculpture by Takamura Kōun designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan. Created in 1893 for the Chicago World's Fair, this masterwork blends traditional Japanese wood carving with Western realism. Visit it at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno.

Discover the Main Hall of Ushihiko Shrine in Naruto, Tokushima — an Important Cultural Property built in 1599 and the oldest surviving shrine building in the prefecture.

Standing halfway up Mt. Kirihata in Awa City, Tokushima, the Kirihataji Daitō is a National Important Cultural Property rescued from the early Meiji abolition of Buddhist temples. Originally commissioned in 1607 by Toyotomi Hideyori to pray for the repose of his father Hideyoshi's soul, it was dismantled from Osaka's Sumiyoshi Shinra-ji and painstakingly rebuilt at Kirihataji, the 10th temple on the Shikoku Pilgrimage, over roughly a decade. Its unique five-bay-square-over-three-bay-square form is the only surviving example of its type in Japan.

Jōrokuji Kannon-dō is an elegant two-tiered Buddhist hall in Tokushima City, rebuilt in 1648 and designated a National Important Cultural Property of Japan. Part of the Sōtō Zen temple Jōrokuji—affectionately called the "Hōryū-ji of Awa" for its concentration of historic buildings—the hall enshrines a nearly five-meter-tall Heian-period statue of Avalokiteshvara that gave the temple its name. This guide covers the hall's architecture, history, nearby attractions, and essential travel information for international visitors.

Jōroku-ji's two-storied Sanmon, raised in the late Muromachi period, is the oldest surviving building in Tokushima. Note its layered roofs and maple-lined approach.

Jōrokuji's main hall was once the abbot's quarters, rebuilt in 1629 for a lord's daughter. Its chamfered pillars mark early-Edo work and a blood-ceiling tradition.

Discover 922 Important Cultural Properties excavated from the Kannon-ji and Shikiji sites in Tokushima, including rare 7th-century Analects wooden tablets and the largest mokkan ever found in Japan. This remarkable collection reveals the inner workings of ancient Japan's provincial government, from bureaucratic correspondence to spiritual rituals. Free admission at Rekishiru Tokushima museum.

The Former Aoki Family Nasu Villa in Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, is a German-style Western residence built by Meiji-era Foreign Minister Aoki Shūzō and designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan. Designed by Matsugasaki Tsumunaga — whose twelve years of architectural study in Germany produced this sole surviving work in Japan — the villa features distinctive fish-scale slate walls and authentic German timber-frame construction. It stands as a rare testament to the pioneering development of the Nasunogahara plain and the lives of the Meiji statesmen who shaped modern Japan.

Discover the Important Cultural Property front gate of Entsuji Temple in Mashiko, Tochigi — a bold Muromachi-period four-legged gate with exquisite Chinese-style carvings, standing at the historic headquarters of the Nagoe branch of Jodo Buddhism.

Ōsaki Shrine in Moka City, Tochigi Prefecture, is a venerable Engishiki-listed shrine with over 1,500 years of history. Dedicated to the gods of fortune Daikoku and Ebisu, its Main Hall (1707) and Worship Hall (late 17th century) feature extraordinary polychrome carvings by master sculptor Shimamura Entetsu, designated as Important Cultural Properties of Japan in 2018. The shrine represents a pioneering stage in the development of ornate decorative shrine architecture in northern Kantō.