Book of Song Dynasty Book Yi Chu Six Books

A Buddhist Reference Book, Printed in Song China

Twelve thread-bound volumes, printed from woodblocks in southern China more than seven centuries ago, are kept among the treasures of Tōfuku-ji, a large Zen temple in the southeastern hills of Kyoto. Together they make up the Gisho Rokujō (Yiqu Liutie in Chinese), a Buddhist reference work compiled in the tenth century. The Tōfuku-ji set is generally regarded as the only surviving printing of the text from the Song dynasty, which is the main reason it carries Japan's highest cultural ranking.

The work itself was put together by a monk named Yichu (Gisho), who lived in Qizhou in northern China around the middle of the 900s. He gathered passages from a great many older books and sorted them by subject, so that a reader could look up a topic and find the relevant quotations collected in one place. Chinese scholars call this kind of book a leishu, a classified encyclopedia. Yichu modeled his on a famous secular example, the Baishi Liutie of the Tang poet Bai Juyi. Because his version dealt with the Buddha and the Buddhist tradition, it became known by a second name, the Shishi Rokujō, the "Six Compendia on Buddhist Matters."

Yichu compiled the text during the short-lived dynasties that sat between the Tang and the Song. The copy at Tōfuku-ji, however, was printed later, during the Southern Song (1127–1279). This is a book made by hand from carved wooden blocks, on paper, and bound in the East Asian style.

Why a Printed Book Became a National Treasure

To a first-time visitor it can seem surprising that a printed book ranks alongside paintings and temple halls as a National Treasure. The answer lies in what the Japanese call a Sōban, a Song-dynasty imprint.

The Song period coincided with Japan's late Heian and Kamakura eras, and it was a high point for printing in China. Craftsmen cut characters into blocks with great precision, and the resulting books were prized for the clarity of their type and the quality of their paper. Many such volumes crossed the sea to Japan, where temples and scholarly families preserved them with care. Surviving Song imprints are scarce today, and a complete set of a text that exists nowhere else in its printed form is rarer still.

The Tōfuku-ji Gisho Rokujō was designated a National Treasure on 22 November 1952, under the cultural-property system Japan rebuilt after the Second World War. Its designation number is 00137.

One further item travels with the set and shares its designation. In the autumn of 1612, Emperor Go-Yōzei wrote out twelve title slips for the volumes in his own hand, together with an accompanying letter. These were later mounted as a single hanging scroll, and they are listed as an attached object in the official record. The imperial labels are a sign of how highly the book was valued at the early Edo court.

What Makes the Object Worth Knowing

A point worth being honest about: the book is almost never on view. It is a fragile paper object that the temple keeps in storage, and members of the public do not normally encounter it during an ordinary visit.

When it does appear, the things to notice are the marks of the Song printing shop. The carved characters are even and confident, the columns ruled and regular, and the paper has aged to a warm tone that hand-copied manuscripts rarely match. The set also carries a small piece of modern drama. Temple records and an entry in the chronicle kept by the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties note that in 1949, in the difficult years just after the war, Tōfuku-ji reported the volumes missing to the Kyoto police. The set survives today and was shown intact in the major 2023 retrospectives devoted to the temple.

Those two exhibitions are the realistic way to see it. In 2023 the National Treasure traveled to the Tokyo National Museum in spring and the Kyoto National Museum in autumn, as part of large special shows on Tōfuku-ji's art and history. Outside such occasions, the volumes stay out of sight, so anyone hoping to see the actual book should watch for special museum exhibitions rather than expect it on the temple grounds.

Visiting Tōfuku-ji

The temple that owns the book is itself one of Kyoto's great Zen institutions, and it rewards a visit on its own terms. Tōfuku-ji is the head temple of the Tōfukuji branch of Rinzai Zen and ranks fourth among the city's Five Great Zen Temples, the Gozan. It was founded in the thirteenth century by the court noble Kujō Michiie, who wanted a monastery to rival the two giants of Nara; the name Tōfuku borrows a character from each of Tōdaiji and Kōfukuji.

Its abbot at the founding was the monk Enni (1202–1280), honored after his death as Shōichi Kokushi, the first "national teacher" title an emperor ever granted in Japan. Enni had spent six years studying Zen in Song China under the master Wuzhun Shifan, and he came home in 1241 with a large library of Chinese books. That library, catalogued at the temple's Fumon-in subtemple, is the root of Tōfuku-ji's remarkable holdings of Song imprints, of which the Gisho Rokujō is one.

The grounds are free to walk, with admission charged for specific areas. Most people come for the Sanmon, a National Treasure gate that is the oldest and largest of its kind at any Japanese Zen temple, and for the Tsūtenkyō, a covered wooden bridge that looks out over a ravine planted with thousands of maples. The Hōjō gardens, redesigned in the 1930s by Shigemori Mirei and known for their checkerboard of moss and stone, were named a National Place of Scenic Beauty in 2014.

Reaching the temple is easy. Tōfukuji Station, served by the JR Nara Line and the Keihan Line, is about a ten-minute walk away, one stop south of Kyoto Station. Opening hours and admission fees shift with the seasons, and the autumn maple weeks in particular bring higher fees and dense crowds, so it is wise to check the current details before setting out.