Important cultural property

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.

A 20.3 cm bronze ritual handbell, probably early Heian, owned by Enpukuji in Choshi, Chiba: a rare forerunner of the vajra bell, kept at the Nara National Museum.

A Kamakura white-bronze mirror, 20.5 cm across, from Tamasaki Shrine in Chiba, cast with an old plum, two sparrows and pampas grass; once hung before the altar.

A 1321 bronze bell cast for a temple in Shimotsuke, moved to Kamakura's Jomyoji and then to Nihonji on Mount Nokogiri, Chiba; now kept inside the Dharma Hall.

A 1286 bronze bell by the Kamakura founder Mononobe no Kunimitsu at Koamiji in Tateyama, Chiba, cast with a Sanskrit dharani; it hangs in the temple's bell tower.

Chiba's oldest dated temple bell, cast in 1264 by Hiroshina Shigenaga for Ganzoji in Nagara: a rare bell without bosses, bearing Womb Realm seed syllables.

A 1278 bell by Onakatomi Kanemori, moved from Daifukuji to Hondoji in Matsudo, Chiba, in 1482, when its seed syllables were replaced with Nichiren's lineage.

The Izumianashi Shrine Auxiliary Kasuga Shrine Main Hall is a small kasuga-zukuri hall dated to about 1602, though older details hint it may predate that era.