Gogumaiki (Seiji 6th Year/autograph)

Gogumaiki: One Courtier's Record of the Year 1367

In the closing weeks of 1367, the second Ashikaga shogun, Yoshiakira, lay dying in Kyoto. He handed the headship of his house to a ten-year-old son, the future Yoshimitsu, and entrusted the boy to the deputy Hosokawa Yoriyuki. A court noble named Sanjō Kintada (1325–1383) was living through that same year in the capital, and he wrote it down month by month in his own hand.

The scroll that holds his account of 1367 is known as the Gogumaiki. It is a single handscroll, the diarist's own autograph, and it survives today at the Yōmei Bunko, a historical archive in the western hills of Kyoto. In 1974 it was designated an Important Cultural Property.

A diary like this is called a kokiroku, a private daily record kept by a member of the court aristocracy. Such diaries were practical documents. A noble wrote down how a ceremony was performed, who attended, what the weather did, and what news arrived, so that he and his descendants would know the correct precedent the next time. Read centuries later, they become some of the most detailed political and social sources Japan possesses for the medieval court.

The Diarist and His Diary

Sanjō Kintada headed the senior line of the Sanjō, a family of Seiga rank. Seiga houses stood just below the five regent families at the top of court society, and their men could rise to the highest offices short of regent. Kintada reached Inner Minister at Senior Second Rank, stepped down from that post in 1362, was raised to Senior First Rank, and afterward held no further office. His son Sanefuyu carried on the line and kept a diary of his own.

The title Gogumaiki looks back seven generations. Kintada's ancestor Sanjō Sanefusa had kept a diary called the Gumaiki, and the later record borrowed the name, with the prefix go marking it as the "later" Gumaiki. Kintada also appears under other titles, including Go-Oshikōji Naifuki and Kintada-kō ki.

Kintada kept his diary across roughly two decades, and the autograph survives in scattered pieces held by different institutions. The largest group, about thirty scrolls, belongs to the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo. Two scrolls are at the Sonkeikaku Bunko, two more at the Archives of the Imperial Household Agency, and this one scroll, covering 1367, at the Yōmei Bunko. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the Yōmei Bunko scroll forms a single body of material with the University of Tokyo manuscript, the two having been separated over the centuries.

Why It Matters

Japan ranks its nationally protected heritage in tiers. Important Cultural Property is the broad national designation; National Treasure is the narrower top grade reserved for items judged to be of exceptional value. The 1367 scroll at the Yōmei Bunko is an Important Cultural Property, designated on 8 June 1974. The much larger body of the same diary at the University of Tokyo had already been designated at the same rank in 1957.

The value lies in the year it covers. 1367 was a turning point for the Muromachi government. In the eleventh month Yoshiakira fell gravely ill and transferred authority to his young son; in the twelfth month he died, and the boy who became Ashikaga Yoshimitsu inherited the warrior house that would, under his adult rule, dominate both the shogunate and the imperial court. The Northern Court emperor of the day was Go-Kōgon. Kintada watched these shifts from inside the court, and a record of court ceremony and capital politics written through that exact year carries weight that a later summary cannot match.

Looking at the Object Itself

Court diaries were rarely written on blank paper. A noble received an annotated almanac, the guchūreki, printed for the coming year with the calendar, auspicious and inauspicious days, and astronomical notes already laid out. He then brushed his daily entries into the open space beside each date. Part of the Yōmei Bunko scroll takes the form of a fair copy that Kintada rewrote, a saijihon, rather than the rough first draft.

The brushwork shows a working document. Additions and corrections run through the text, the marks of a man revising what he had set down. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records this directly, and it is part of what makes an autograph diary so valuable: the reader sees the writer thinking, not a polished copy made by a later hand.

Turn the scroll over and a second layer appears. The back carries a kana calendar for 1366, along with documents and draft poems. Paper was costly in medieval Japan, and a sheet that had served one purpose was often reused for another. Writing left on a verso, called shihai monjo, frequently preserves material that has survived nowhere else, which is why historians prize the reverse side of an old scroll as much as its face.

Around the Archive

The Yōmei Bunko sits in the Utano district of Kyoto's Ukyō Ward, in the quiet hills west of the city center. It safeguards the collection of the Konoe family, the senior house among the five regent families, and was established in 1938 by Konoe Fumimaro. The archive holds well over a hundred thousand items, including eight National Treasures. The most celebrated is the Midō Kanpakuki, the autograph diary of Fujiwara no Michinaga from around the year 1000, the oldest surviving autograph diary in the world and a UNESCO Memory of the World.

The Yōmei Bunko is a research archive, not a public museum. It does not admit individual visitors; access is limited to booked groups during set seasons, so the 1367 scroll is not something a traveler can simply walk in to see. The way to encounter its world is through special exhibitions. The Museum of Kyoto in central Kyoto runs a recurring series drawn from the Yōmei Bunko, and major shows at venues such as the Kyushu National Museum have displayed Konoe treasures including Michinaga's diary. The Kyoto National Museum, near the Higashiyama temple district, regularly puts classical records and old documents on view.

Readers who want the text rather than the object can find it in print. The University of Tokyo has published Kintada's diary in its Dai Nihon Kokiroku series, the standard scholarly edition, available in research libraries.