Meihoki

Three Scrolls, National Treasure since 1952

Meihoki (冥報記) is a Tang-dynasty text owned by Kosanji in Kyoto Prefecture, designated a National Treasure on 22 November 1952. The quantity is three scrolls and the designation number is 00143. Nothing is designated as an appendage.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs leaves the field for designation as an Important Cultural Property blank, so the work went to National Treasure without that earlier step, the eighteenth such case among the properties covered here.

The commentary reads: a work of the Tang period. This is the seventeenth one-sentence commentary among the properties covered here. Kosanji has already appeared with the Choju Jinbutsu Giga.

The Country Field Reads China

What catches the eye here is the field for country.

The national database gives China, not Japan.

The Vajrabhadrani Sutra has Japan in that field, and the Konjaku Monogatarishu is a manuscript made in Japan. This is otherwise: something made in China holds a Japanese National Treasure listing.

The system for protecting cultural properties does not ask where a thing was made. What matters is that it is in Japan and protected there.

Other properties covered here, the summer landscape and the Taihi Tenmoku bowl, are of the Southern Song, made in China and handed down in Japan before being listed. What differs here is that the country field states it outright.

Two Databases Give Different Categories

The discrepancy seen once before recurs.

The national database gives the category as calligraphy and books. Cultural Heritage Online displays it as other.

The Vajrabhadrani Sutra showed the same split. This is the second instance.

This article follows the national database, whose fields are the more detailed, and treats the work as calligraphy and books.

Accounts elsewhere say the text is lost in China and survives only in Japan. The Agency's record says nothing about survival in other countries, and this article does not make that claim.

Tang Texts Standing Together

The related entries show works of one kind.

Among them are a partial scroll of a commentary on the Flower Garland Sutra, the twenty-seventh chapter of a Chinese dictionary in its first half, partial scrolls of a compiled commentary on the Nirvana Sutra, a partial scroll of a Buddhist catalogue, and further treatises.

Inside the angle brackets stand words for partial scrolls and the numbers of chapters. That the whole does not survive is written into the titles.

As with the Gobu Shinkan scroll lacking its opening, and the sword whose inscription is illegible beyond a point, the title carries the gap. For texts, it is which chapters survive that the title records.

This work is titled simply Meihoki, with no note of partial survival. Its three scrolls are recorded as a complete set.

Consulting It

Kosanji, in Kyoto Prefecture, owns the text. It is a temple holding, not kept on permanent display.

Work on paper is vulnerable to light, so periods on view are limited, and all three scrolls are not necessarily shown at once.

No dimensions are recorded. The Agency's field for dimensions and weight stands empty.

Consultation and study follow procedures the temple sets. Check before travelling.