News from the Emperor Gosaga (April 15th)

A Letter in an Emperor's Own Hand

In the spring of 1246, a man who had just stepped down from the throne of Japan took up a brush and wrote a short letter to a senior priest at Ninna-ji in Kyoto. The note thanked the priest for Buddhist rites carried out the previous year. Mounted today as a single hanging scroll, that sheet of paper is the one piece of writing that scholars can confidently attribute to the hand of Emperor Go-Saga (1220–1272).

The work is registered under its formal title, Go-Saga Tennō Shinkan Goshōsoku (Fifteenth Day of the Fourth Month). The word shinkan means a document written personally by an emperor, and goshōsoku simply means a letter. In Japanese cultural-property terms the scroll is classed as komonjo, an old historical document, rather than as a work of art commissioned for display. Its value lies in whose hand held the brush.

The Emperor Who Wrote It

Go-Saga came to the throne almost by accident. When the boy-emperor Shijō died suddenly in 1242 at the age of twelve, the court and the Kamakura shogunate disagreed sharply over who should succeed him. The powerful regent Kujō Michiie backed a son of the retired Emperor Juntoku, but the shogunate, wary of anyone tied to the failed Jōkyū uprising of 1221, refused. Their choice fell instead on Kunihito, a grandson of Emperor Go-Toba who had been raised quietly outside the centre of power and had nearly entered the priesthood. He was enthroned as the eighty-eighth emperor.

His reign lasted only four years. In early 1246 he abdicated in favour of his young son, who became Emperor Go-Fukakusa, and then governed from retirement as a cloistered emperor for more than two decades, through the reigns of two of his sons. The letter now held at Ninna-ji is dated the fifteenth day of the fourth month of that same year, 1246, placing it right at the threshold between his time on the throne and his long period of rule from behind the curtain.

Go-Saga is remembered for a decision he failed to make rather than one he made. He never settled which of his sons' descendants should hold the senior claim to the throne, leaving the matter to the shogunate. The two imperial lines that grew from his sons Go-Fukakusa and Kameyama later hardened into rival camps, and that rivalry became one of the roots of the Northern and Southern Courts schism of the fourteenth century. A quiet letter of thanks, then, comes from a figure whose name sits at a hinge of medieval history.

Why a Single Letter Became a National Treasure

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on 22 November 1952, among the first wave of treasures recognised under Japan's post-war cultural-property law. The reason is scarcity as much as beauty. Imperial autographs survive in far smaller numbers than one might expect, since most court documents were drafted by secretaries rather than by emperors themselves. Of everything attributed to Go-Saga over the centuries, this is the only example whose authenticity scholars regard as secure. Remove it and there is no firmly verified trace of his handwriting left.

That makes the scroll a primary historical source as well as a calligraphic one. The recipient was Dōshin, a cloistered imperial prince who served as abbot of Ninna-ji and stood close to the imperial family by blood. The letter therefore records, in the emperor's own words, the personal and religious bond between the cloistered court and one of Kyoto's great Shingon temples. For historians of the Kamakura period, a document of this kind carries weight that no later copy could match.

Calligraphy specialists prize Kamakura-period imperial hands for their individuality, and exhibitions of shinkan regularly place Go-Saga's letter alongside autographs by emperors such as Go-Toba, Kameyama, and Go-Daigo. Seen in that company, the brushwork reads less as a private note and more as a rare window onto how a thirteenth-century sovereign actually wrote.

How to See It, and What Surrounds It

The scroll is fragile and is not on permanent view. For its protection it is kept on deposit at the Kyoto National Museum, and it appears in public only from time to time, either in the museum's special exhibitions or during the seasonal showings at Ninna-ji's own treasure hall, the Reihōkan. Anyone hoping to see the original should check the current exhibition schedules of both institutions before travelling, since on most days neither building has it out.

Ninna-ji itself rewards the visit regardless. Founded in 888 and long led by abbots of imperial blood, the temple in the Omuro district of north-west Kyoto is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing for the city's historic monuments. Its great Niōmon gate, the five-storey pagoda, and the low-growing Omuro cherry trees that bloom late each spring draw visitors throughout the year. The Reihōkan opens for limited periods in spring and autumn, and those windows are the best chance to encounter the temple's documents and paintings, this imperial letter among them when it is on rotation.

Reaching Ninna-ji is straightforward. Omuro-Ninnaji station on the Keifuku Kitano line sits a short walk from the gate, and the temple pairs naturally with nearby Ryōan-ji and Kinkaku-ji for a day among the monuments of western Kyoto.