Interior of the Sutra Hall of Chusonji Temple

Four Objects from the Sutra Repository, National Treasure since 1958

Interior of the Sutra Hall of Chusonji Temple (中尊寺経蔵堂内具, Chusonji Kyozo Donaigu) is a group of ritual objects from the sutra repository of Chusonji at Hiraizumi, Nishiiwai County, Iwate Prefecture, designated a National Treasure in 1958, on 8 February. It had become an Important Cultural Property on 9 June 1951. The category is applied arts and the owner is Daichojuin.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the period as Kamakura. Descriptions calling these a masterpiece of the late Heian period appear elsewhere, but the Agency's record reads Kamakura. Within the same temple the furnishings of the Golden Hall carry Heian in that field, so the two groups are dated differently.

The Agency's itemised list gives one wooden dais, one table in mother-of-pearl and sprinkled lacquer, one gong stand and one lampstand in mother-of-pearl and sprinkled lacquer: four objects. A peacock-design gong is designated as an appended item.

The Inlay Has Gone, Leaving Only the Cuts

The most striking line in the Agency's account of material and form concerns the gong stand.

Wooden, with posts standing on shaped feet carrying a peaked beam with scrolled ends. It was originally worked in mother-of-pearl on a sprinkled ground, but the inlay has flaked away so severely that only the cuts remain.

Mother-of-pearl inlay is shell cut thin and set into lacquer. Almost all the shell has come away, and what remains is the recesses cut to receive it. The ornament itself is gone; the traces of where it sat remain.

The metalwork survives, however. The scrolled ends and the clamp fittings are gilt bronze, cut with a scrolling flower design against a ring-punched ground and pierced at the flower tips. The post collars carry the same design. The shell was lost and the metal stayed.

The wooden dais carries a similar note: of the glass beads set in its fittings, three green and two white remain. Five beads are counted as surviving.

One Design Across Four Objects

The four items in the list share an element.

The fittings of the dais are cut with a flower design against a ring-punched ground; those of the table are gilt bronze engraved with a scrolling flower design on the same ground; those of the gong stand are cut with that design; and those of the lampstand likewise.

A ring-punched ground carrying a scrolling flower design appears on all four. The ground is made of small circles struck close together, and the design is an imagined flower worked into a scroll.

Four separate objects, matched by the design on their fittings. They were made as one set. Where the peony arabesque mounting at Oyamazumi cuts one design in five ways across a single object, this group carries one design across several.

Size and Form

The Agency records the measurements of each.

The dais is 15.4 centimetres high and 65.4 centimetres square. The table stands 77.6 centimetres overall, with a top 34.1 centimetres by 66.3 centimetres. The gong stand is 57.9 centimetres high and 55.1 wide. The lampstand is 80.9 centimetres high with a base 24.8 centimetres across.

The dais is low and the lampstand tall. A dais is where the officiant sits and so sits near the floor; a lampstand raises a light and so stands high. Use shows directly in the heights.

The table's legs are pentagonal in section, the type called heron legs, with leaf-shaped fins at their roots. The lampstand scatters butterflies and flowers in mother-of-pearl across a sprinkled ground. Butterflies appear on the lampstand alone.

Visiting

Daichojuin owns these objects, where the furnishings of the Golden Hall belong to Konjikiin. The two groups are held by different sub-temples.

The temple's holdings are shown in the Sankozo treasure hall at Chusonji. Opening hours and charges can change with the season, so check the temple's information before travelling.

Not all four are necessarily shown at once. The gong stand in particular has lost its inlay, so what is on view there is the cutting.

From Hiraizumi Station on the JR Tohoku Main Line it is about 25 minutes on foot, or a short bus ride.