Important cultural property

Held by the Tokyo National Museum, this Important Cultural Property is a hanging scroll brushed in 1363 by the seventy-year-old Rinzai Zen master Sekishitsu Zenkyū. It records the Buddhist address he delivered at the formal hanging of an imperial plaque, bestowed by the retired Emperor Gokōgon, on the Seiryōtō-in memorial hall of Chōfuku-ji in Kyoto. Coinciding with the thirteenth-anniversary memorial of his senior dharma brother Gekirin Dōkō, the scroll is admired as one of Sekishitsu's most representative works of monumental Zen calligraphy.

Sō-yō-son is a bronze ritual wine vessel cast in China during the late Shang dynasty, between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, and designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan. Shaped as two rams joined back-to-back beneath a cylindrical vessel, it is one of only two surviving examples in the world — the other resides in the British Museum in London. This 3,000-year-old masterpiece is held by the Nezu Museum in Aoyama, Tokyo.

The 2,616 stone artifacts from the Maeda Kochi Site in Akiruno City, Tokyo, are designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan. Dating to approximately 15,500 years ago during the Incipient Jomon period, this site served as a specialized stone spear workshop and provides the earliest evidence of salmon fishing in Japan. The collection can be viewed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Archaeological Center in Tama City and the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura City.

Built in 1914 at the Railway Agency's Shinbashi Works, the wooden Nade 6141 is the oldest surviving bogie electric railcar in Japan and the prototype of today's commuter trains, introducing the three-door layout and multiple-unit control system. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2017, it is preserved and displayed at The Railway Museum in Saitama City.

Six Muromachi measuring boxes from Horyuji, now at the Tokyo National Museum, each counted as one sho yet hold 1.47 to 1.87 litres, from before standard units.

An Important Cultural Property at the National Archives of Japan, compiled from castaway Daikokuya Kodayu's account of Russia, with illustrated scrolls and maps.

An Important Cultural Property at the Maeda Ikutokukai: a fragment of the Lotus Sutra's eighth fascicle, dated 1326, brushed by the noble Madenokoji Nobufusa.

Two Kunoji-kyo scrolls at the Gotoh Museum: a Heian decorated Lotus Sutra written one chapter per person by Retired Emperor Toba's court circle around 1141.

Three Kunoji-kyo scrolls at the Tokyo National Museum, a gold-strewn Heian sutra copied by court nobles, ranked Important Cultural Property, not National Treasure.

At the Tokyo National Museum, this Important Cultural Property holds the Lotus Sutra in eight handscrolls, all written in one early-Heian hand on yellow hemp paper.

A handscroll of the fifth Lotus Sutra volume, hand-copied in eighth-century Nara, its even script the mark of the state scriptoria. Held by the Gotoh Museum, Tokyo.

A sutra fragment dedicated in 457 by a Northern Liang king at Gaochang. Its dated colophon and early brushwork make it a key manuscript at Tokyo's Calligraphy Museum.

Uemura Shoen's near life-size mother and child, painted in 1934. An Important Cultural Property at MOMAT in Tokyo, it pictures a married woman of Meiji Kyoto.

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.