Important cultural property

Held by the Sunritz Hattori Museum of Arts in Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture, this Important Cultural Property is a single-figure fragment of the celebrated thirteenth-century Satake-bon Sanjūrokkasen-e — the foremost surviving cycle of Thirty-six Immortal Poets paintings of the Kamakura period. The fragment depicts Nakatsukasa, a tenth-century Heian poetess and daughter of Prince Atsuyoshi and the poetess Ise. Traditionally attributed to the master portraitist Fujiwara Nobuzane, with calligraphy attributed to Gokyōgoku Yoshitsune, the work survived the famous 1919 dispersal known as the Cutting of the Picture Scroll and now rests on the quiet shore of Lake Suwa.

A Momoyama short sword sheathed in patterned gold, over an earlier Nobukuni blade. Its lion fittings are attributed to the Goto family, with Hosokawa provenance.

Three small silver cups at Tokyo's Eisei Bunko, said to be from China's Jincun tombs near Luoyang. Note the surviving gilding, loose rings, and inscribed bases.

Taken in 1854 by Eliphalet Brown Jr. during Commodore Perry's expedition, this daguerreotype portrait of Tanaka Mitsuyoshi — a samurai official who negotiated with the American squadron — is one of the oldest surviving photographs of a Japanese person taken on Japanese soil. Designated a national Important Cultural Property in 2006, this quarter-plate daguerreotype is entrusted to the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Yebisu Garden Place, Meguro, Tokyo.

A collection of autograph manuscript drafts by the Edo-period Buddhist monk and scholar Keichū (1640–1701), designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan. The collection includes working drafts of groundbreaking works such as the Man'yō Daishōki and Waji Shōran-shō that laid the foundations of Japanese classical studies and linguistics.

This rare 27-centimetre ken, straight and double-edged, is signed by Mitsutada, the Kamakura-era founder of Bizen's Osafune school, a smith famed for curved tachi.

Held at the Tokyo National Museum, this Important Cultural Property is a rare dated hanging scroll painted in 1792 by literati master Uragami Gyokudō at age forty-eight, just two years before he abandoned his samurai life. Discover its bright indigo-and-ochre palette and the seeds of his later masterworks.

A Kamakura silk painting of Aizen Myōō, the red king of passion, an Important Cultural Property of 1953. His iconography and where to see kindred scrolls in Tokyo.

A large Kamakura-period painting of the Buddha Amida descending on clouds with Kannon and Seishi to welcome a dying soul. Held at the Tokyo National Museum.

Held in a private Tokyo collection, this Important Cultural Property is a Kamakura-period silk painting tied to the 1299 National Treasure Ippen Hijiri-e. The single hanging scroll depicts a scene at the sacred island of Enoshima and was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1959.

A Southern Song-period silk painting of a quail bearing the "Zakkashitsu-in" connoisseurship seal of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori, this Important Cultural Property descends from the celebrated Higashiyama lineage of Chinese paintings cherished by the Ashikaga shogunal house, and is privately preserved in Tokyo as a quiet witness to Japan's medieval engagement with classical Chinese art.

A hanging scroll in ink and color on silk, named an Important Cultural Property in 1959. Lan Ying, who painted it, was a leading landscape master of the late Ming.

A Kamakura silk painting of Ganjin, the Chinese monk blinded crossing to Japan in 753. An Important Cultural Property in Tokyo, echoing his Toshodai-ji statue.

A Kamakura silk scroll once called a nobleman's residence, now read as the Tales of Ise scene of Narihira crossing snow to visit Prince Koretaka at Ono.

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.