Jikei Daishi’s Handwritten Will (May 1997)

A Dying Abbot's Handwriting, Preserved for a Thousand Years

In the fifth month of Tenroku 3 (972), a sixty-one-year-old monk on Mount Hiei was unwell enough to think his end was near. He picked up his brush and wrote out, point by point, what should happen to everything he had built and everyone he had led. That single handscroll survives. It is the autograph testament of Ryōgen, known after death as Jie Daishi, and it is the document registered here as a National Treasure.

The Japanese title, Jie Daishi jihitsu yuigō, says it plainly: jihitsu means written in his own hand, and yuigō is a testament left by a senior monk for his successors. It is one handscroll, classed as an ancient document (komonjo), dating to the year 972. The owner of record is Rozanji, the Kyoto temple whose origins trace back to Ryōgen himself.

What makes the scroll unusual is that it is not a copy made by a later hand, nor a polished literary work composed for posterity. It is the working brushwork of a man settling his affairs under physical strain, and that immediacy is part of why scholars value it so highly.

Why It Was Named a National Treasure

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on 26 May 1964. The case for that ranking rests less on calligraphic beauty than on historical weight. Ryōgen (912–985) is remembered as the figure who revived Enryaku-ji, the great monastic complex on Mount Hiei and the headquarters of the Tendai school. In 966 he became its head abbot (zasu), and after fire had swept across the mountain he rebuilt its halls and pagodas, tightened monastic discipline, and reorganized the system of scholarly debate that trained generations of monks.

His testament lists what he was passing on, and the list itself is the historical prize. It covers the buildings of the various precincts of Mount Hiei, landed estates in several provinces, collections of Buddhist texts, and ritual implements. It then turns to his own funeral and the memorial services to follow, with specific instructions for each. Read together, these clauses let historians reconstruct how large and how wealthy Enryaku-ji had grown by the late tenth century, and how tightly its fortunes were tied to the aristocratic families who endowed it.

A document like this carries a kind of evidence that chronicles rarely supply. A court history might record that Mount Hiei was powerful; a personal testament naming estates, halls, and successors shows the machinery of that power at close range.

The Man Behind the Brush

Most visitors to Kyoto temples meet Ryōgen long before they learn his formal name. He is the monk usually called Ganzan Daishi, the title that fixes the date of his death on the third day of the first month. He is also the source of one of Japan's most recognizable protective charms. A widespread legend holds that during an epidemic he took on the form of a horned demon to frighten off the spirits of disease, and woodblock prints of that gaunt, horned silhouette, the Tsuno Daishi talisman, were pasted at doorways across the country to keep sickness out.

The recipient of the testament was Jinzen, Ryōgen's leading disciple and a son of the senior court noble Fujiwara no Morosuke. Entrusting his legacy to a Fujiwara son was not only personal trust; it bound Mount Hiei's future to the most influential family at court. Jinzen went on to lead the Tendai school in turn. Knowing this changes how the scroll reads. The careful clauses about estates and successors are also a snapshot of how religion and aristocratic politics had fused by Ryōgen's day.

Stand in front of the text and the human scale returns. The instructions are concrete and unsentimental, the requests of someone who knew exactly what he had assembled and wanted it kept intact.

Where to Connect With the Scroll

One practical point comes first. The original scroll is held in deposit at the Tokyo National Museum and is shown only rarely, so a trip to Rozanji will not put the document itself in front of you. What Rozanji offers instead is the place where Ryōgen's story begins and where his memory is still actively kept.

Rozanji stands on the east side of the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds, along Teramachi Street. Its roots reach back to a hall founded by Ryōgen in the tenth century, and the temple still honors him: its February setsubun rite, the Oni-hōraku or demon ceremony, dramatizes the same legend of demons driven off that produced the Tsuno Daishi charm.

The temple has a second, quite separate claim to fame. The grounds were once the residence of the writer Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, and are widely regarded as the place where much of that novel was written. The dry landscape garden here, the Genji Garden, was laid out to mark that connection. Its moss and white gravel are at their best in early summer, when Chinese bellflowers open in soft purple from June into early September.

Visiting Rozanji

The temple opens daily from 9:00 to 16:00, with admission of 500 yen for adults and 400 yen for elementary and junior-high students. The Genji Garden closes on a few set dates each year, including 1 January and the first nine days of February. The easiest approach is by Kyoto city bus to the Furitsu-Idai-Byōin-mae stop, about a five-minute walk away; Keihan Jingū-marutamachi Station is roughly fifteen minutes on foot.