Hosohana Karyobinka Maki-E 〓 Booklet Box

A box built to hold a pilgrim's scriptures

Two columns of gold characters run down the center of the lid. They name what the box was made to hold: the scriptures that the monk Kūkai carried home from Tang China. This is the Maki'e Lacquered Box with Hōsōge Flowers and Karyōbinga Designs, a National Treasure kept at Ninna-ji, a temple in the western hills of Kyoto.

Kūkai (774–835), who founded the Shingon school of Japanese esoteric Buddhism, spent two years in China studying under the master Huiguo. Among the things he copied and brought back were thirty small booklets of sutras and commentaries, each only about fifteen centimeters across, a few written in his own hand. These came to be known as the Sanjūjō-sasshi, the "thirty-booklet collection," and were honored for centuries as relics of the founder.

The box came later than the books inside it. After Kūkai's death the booklets were held at Tō-ji and at one point nearly scattered; an imperial order gathered them back together. In the year 919 they were presented for the emperor's inspection, and the court supplied this box to house them. The diary of Emperor Daigo records the event, which is why the box can be dated with a precision unusual for an object so old.

It measures 37 centimeters long, 24.4 wide and 8.3 high, and it is not made of wood. The body is hemp cloth shaped over a mold and hardened with layer upon layer of lacquer, the same dry-lacquer method used for Buddhist sculpture of the time. The finished box is thin-walled and surprisingly light for its size.

Why it is a National Treasure

The box was designated a National Treasure in 1951. Curiously, it is registered not as lacquerware but under the heading of calligraphy and classics, classified together with the scriptures it was made to protect.

Very little maki-e survives from the Heian period (794–1185), and almost none of what does survive can be tied to a particular year. This box can. Because Emperor Daigo's diary fixes its appearance to 919, it has become one of the firmest reference points in the history of Japanese lacquer, a standard against which other early pieces are dated and judged.

The decoration justifies the rank on its own. The ground is black lacquer scattered faintly with fine gold and silver powder. Over it the motifs are worked in togidashi maki-e, a technique in which the design is drawn in lacquer, sprinkled with metal powder, coated over again, and then polished back until the picture reemerges level with the surrounding surface. Nothing stands proud of the lid; the images seem to float just beneath a glassy black skin.

What to look at closely

Around the central inscription move the karyōbinga, the mythical birds of the Buddhist paradise. Each has the upper body of a bodhisattva and the lower body and wings of a bird, and the texts say they sing the dharma in a voice no listener ever tires of. At a glance the arrangement reads as a tidy, symmetrical pattern in the Tang Chinese manner. Look a little longer and the symmetry breaks down. Of the twenty-eight birds, no two strike quite the same pose.

Between the birds spread the hōsōge, imaginary blossoms assembled from stylized petals and curling vines. Their stamens are drawn unusually large and full, an archaic touch that reaches back toward eighth-century taste. Butterflies and smaller birds fill the remaining spaces. The whole composition looks rule-bound at first and turns out, on inspection, to be improvised in its details, a habit more typical of Nara-period work than of the strict repetition the Tang style usually implies.

The corners are rounded, and the lid swells gently where its top turns down to the sides. A cord runs around the mouth of the box, half decoration and half reinforcement, giving the rim a finished edge and added strength. These are the marks of a maker thinking about how the object would be handled, not only how it would look.

One caution for visitors: the box is rarely on display. It is kept in the temple storehouse and brought out only on special occasions, such as major loan exhibitions at national museums or the limited spring and autumn openings of Ninna-ji's Reihōkan treasure hall. A careful reproduction also exists and sometimes appears in its place. Anyone hoping to see the original should check exhibition schedules before making the trip.

The temple and what lies around it

Ninna-ji was founded in 888 by Emperor Uda, completing a project begun by his predecessor Emperor Kōkō. Uda later took holy orders and lived here, and for nearly a thousand years the temple was headed by princes of the imperial line, which earned it the name Omuro Gosho, the "Omuro Imperial Residence." It is the head temple of the Omuro branch of Shingon Buddhism and was inscribed as part of the "Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto" on the World Heritage list in 1994.

The grounds reward an unhurried visit. The Kondō, the main hall, is a National Treasure relocated from the Kyoto Imperial Palace, and a five-story pagoda rises behind the great gate. In mid-spring the low-growing Omuro cherry trees bloom later than most in the city, drawing crowds for a short window each year. Ninna-ji sits at the western end of the Kinukake-no-michi, the lane that links it with Ryōan-ji and its rock garden and, a little further on, the gold pavilion of Kinkaku-ji, so the three can be combined in a single day on foot or by bus.