Important cultural property

Held privately in Tokyo, this Heian-period painting sets Vajrasattva among four bodhisattvas of desire, touch, love and pride: passion turned toward awakening.

A 1641 portrait of tea master Sakuma Shogen by Kano Tanyu, made a year before his death, with inscriptions by Zen abbot Kogetsu Sogan and scholar Hayashi Razan.

Seeking Blossoms (Tankazu) by the early Ming court painter Shi Rui is a fifteenth-century Chinese masterpiece preserved in Japan as an Important Cultural Property. The hanging scroll depicts literati seeking out early-spring blossoms in a mountainous landscape, rendered in the brilliant blue-and-green style with lavish use of mineral pigments and gold. Surviving works by Shi Rui are exceptionally rare, making this painting one of the finest examples of Chinese imperial court painting preserved in Japan. It is occasionally displayed in special exhibitions at the Tokyo National Museum.

Twelve silk leaves of insects and fish, paired with Chinese poems, painted by Watanabe Kazan in 1841 and sent to his pupil weeks before his death. A coded farewell.

Preserved in Tokyo and designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan, this Mandala of the Eight-Syllable Manjushri is the oldest surviving example of its iconographic type. Painted in mineral pigments on silk in the early Kamakura period, it shows Manjushri and his eight youthful attendants seated only on lotus thrones rather than on lions, surrounded by sixteen enigmatic circles found in no other example. Used as the principal icon for an esoteric ritual to avert eclipses, earthquakes, and other natural disturbances, it stands as a singular treasure of medieval Japanese Buddhist art.

Held at the Nezu Museum in Aoyama, Tokyo, this Important Cultural Property is a hanging scroll painted in colour on silk during the latter half of the 12th century, late Heian period. It depicts Fugen Bodhisattva (Samantabhadra) seated upon a six-tusked white elephant, accompanied by the Ten Rakshasi in Tang-style robes and two banner-bearing heavenly youths. A masterpiece of late Heian Buddhist painting, it captures the refined spirituality of Lotus Sutra devotion among aristocratic women, and stands as one of the earliest surviving examples of an iconographic tradition uniquely created in Japan.

A rare ink-on-silk painting of a white heron by Ryōzen, a painter-monk active at Tōfuku-ji temple during the Kamakura and Nanbokuchō periods (14th century). Designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan, this privately owned masterpiece illuminates a pivotal moment in the development of Japanese ink painting.

The Important Cultural Property tachi known as Meibutsu Ōmihara, housed at the Tokyo National Museum, is an exceptionally long blade of about 80.9 centimeters attributed to Masahiro of the Ko-Mihara school in Bingo Province. Once owned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, it was bequeathed to Asano Yukinaga and treasured for centuries by the Asano lords of Hiroshima, bearing a gold-inlaid inscription by the renowned sword connoisseur Hon'ami Kōtoku.

Held in private ownership in Tokyo, this Important Cultural Property tachi was forged in the autumn of 1297 by Nyūsai, a late-Kamakura swordsmith from Chikuzen who relocated to Aki Province and is recorded as the earliest documented smith of that region. Standing at the head of the Kyushu classical lineage that runs through Sairen, Jitsua, and culminates in the celebrated Samonji school, Nyūsai is known today by only two surviving dated works — making this 1297 tachi a uniquely valuable witness to medieval Japanese sword history.

A 1347 offering tachi by Moriyoshi of Bizen, paired with an unhardened twin blade. Once a National Treasure, it vanished after the war and was recently found.

A signed, unaltered Bizen tachi of the Kamakura period by the smith Sukekane. Note its low koshizori curve, cloudy utsuri in the steel, and quiet ko-midare temper.

A Kamakura-period tachi signed by the rare Old Bizen smith Sukekane at the Tokyo National Museum, its 73.3 cm blade keeping an early curve and original signature.

A 77.2 cm Kamakura tachi by Tamekiyo of the Bizen Ichimonji school, an Important Cultural Property since 1941, prized for its vivid clove-pattern temper line.

An Important Cultural Property tachi signed by Nagamitsu, a late-Kamakura Osafune master of Bizen, kept at original length with its choji temper and Bizen utsuri.

A privately held Kamakura tachi by the Bizen master Nagamitsu, an Important Cultural Property prized for its choji temper, misty utsuri, and original signed tang.

A Kamakura tachi by Nagamitsu of Bizen's Osafune school. Its brilliant clove-pattern temper and misty utsuri mark this privately held Important Cultural Property.

A tachi signed "Shinbo saku," once a National Treasure and now an Important Cultural Property of unknown whereabouts. Related blades survive in Yamagata and Tokyo.

A Kamakura tachi signed Hisakuni, an Awataguchi smith of Go-Toba's goban kaji. An Important Cultural Property of unknown whereabouts, on Japan's missing register.

A signed late-Kamakura tachi by Osafune Kagemitsu of Bizen, with a formal cord-wrapped mounting, held at the Tokyo National Museum and designated in 1950.

An Important Cultural Property at the Tokyo National Museum: a tachi forged in 1361 by the Osafune smith Masamitsu, the oldest dated blade known from him.