Important cultural property

A late-Kamakura silk scroll at Chōtokuji in Sōsa, Chiba: a twenty-armed Fugen Enmei on four six-tusked white elephants, opened to the public one Sunday each January.

Rare amber-glazed ceramic guardian lion-dogs from medieval Seto, barely 18 cm tall, kept at Katori Jingu in Chiba and made an Important Cultural Property in 1953.

Designated in 2023, Koami-ji's 20 gilt-bronze esoteric ritual implements bear the engraved name of the monk Shinkai, linking Awa and Kanazawa across Tokyo Bay.

A 17th-century ink painting by Iwasa Matabei: Rōgyoku summons a phoenix with her flute. A panel of the dispersed Kanaya screen, an Important Cultural Property.

In 1278 a rumor of a planned debate reached Nichiren at Minobu. His 21-line autograph reply, held at Hondoji as an Important Cultural Property, captures his joy.

Naritasan Buddhist Library holds the oldest manuscript of the Sumiyoshi Monogatari, a Kamakura retelling of a lost Heian tale of a stepdaughter saved by the Kannon.

The Soryu-kyo at Katori Jingu, Chiba, is a bronze mirror dated 1149 with a continental-style twin-dragon reverse, the oldest dated Japanese mirror of its kind.

At Hondo-ji, Chiba's famed hydrangea temple, a 3.8-meter scroll holds a letter Nichiren wrote to Hiki Yoshimoto, sole survivor of his clan's massacre and the monk's devoted patron and scribe.

Five tiny pure-gold bells from an undisturbed 1950 tomb in Kisarazu gave Kinreizuka its name. Its swords and gilt-bronze fittings are an Important Cultural Property.

Kōde shell mound finds in Matsudo: 266 nationally designated Early Jōmon objects, some 6,000 years old. Spouted cooking pots, cord-marked wares, slit stone earrings and a boar-tusk pendant, all held at the Matsudo City Museum.

Unearthed near Narita in 1994, this 20-object Important Cultural Property centres on a unique Jomon clay head, about 5,500 years old, laid in an Early Jomon burial pit.

A gilt-bronze Jizō cast in 1309 as a memorial at Kanpuku-ji—one of four medieval Buddhas made for Katori Jingū, the earliest tied to the Mongol invasions.

Cast in gilt bronze in 1282 by the sculptor Rengan, this seated Buddha at Kanpukuji once served Katori Shrine and bears a prayer to repel the Mongol invaders.

This bronze Eleven-Headed Kannon at Kanpuku-ji in Chiba once served Katori Shrine. Cast in 1282, it carries a prayer to repel the invading Mongol fleet of 1281.

A 47-cm bronze Acala at Ketsuen-ji in Chiba, an Important Cultural Property dated to 1303. The hidden image is unveiled just one day a year, on 28 September.

At Ryūkakuji in Chiba, a bronze Yakushi keeps a head cast in the late 7th century; fire later claimed its body. One of eastern Japan's rare Hakuhō Buddhas.

This gilt-bronze Medicine Buddha at Kanpuku-ji once stood before the deity of Katori Jingu. Saved from melting in 1869, it is now an Important Cultural Property.

Newly designated in 2024, 839 documents trace one Nichiren temple across 620 years, from a monk's vow to guard his master's writings to letters from the Edo shogun's court.

Hokekyo-ji in Ichikawa, Chiba, holds over a hundred letters and treatises in the hand of the monk Nichiren, a rare survival named an Important Cultural Property.

Osaka's Former Ogata Kōan Residence, known as Tekijuku, is Japan's only surviving Dutch studies academy. Designated in 1964, it is open daily except Mondays.