Thirty-Cho Booklet

Thirty Booklets, National Treasure since 1951

Thirty-Cho Booklet (三十帖冊子, Sanjujo Sasshi) is a set of Heian-period booklets owned by Ninnaji in Kyoto Prefecture, designated a National Treasure on 9 June 1951. The quantity is thirty booklets.

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 seventeenth such case among the properties covered here.

The commentary reads: a work of the Heian period. This is the fifteenth one-sentence commentary among the properties covered here.

The Title States the Count

The name of the property is Thirty-Cho Booklet.

Thirty stands in the title, and the quantity field also gives thirty booklets. Title and count agree.

The Yasaka Shrine documents are titled 2,205 documents while their quantity field reads 89 scrolls, 40 volumes, 1 folded book and 1 sheet. There the count of pieces and the form of keeping disagreed.

Here they do not. There are thirty booklets, and that is the name. Contents and form coincide.

The measure word counts books made by folding: paper folded and stacked rather than rolled as a scroll.

Contents and Box Listed Separately on One Day

A box was made for these booklets.

It is recorded as a lacquered booklet box decorated in gold with floral scrollwork and celestial birds, of the Heian period, one box, owned by the same temple.

Its date of designation is 9 June 1951, the same day as the booklets.

Contents and container were designated National Treasures on one day, as two separate properties.

Among the entries related to the Tetsugen printing blocks stood a property combining a printed sutra at Ganjoji with the wooden chest that holds it. Contents and container are sometimes gathered into one property and sometimes kept apart.

The Copy of the Box Has the Fuller Record

A copy of the box exists as well.

The Tokyo National Museum holds a reproduction of it, made by Ito Sadafumi in 1901, the original being dated to the tenth century in the Heian period.

Its dimensions are given: 10.4 centimetres high, 33.5 centimetres long, 21.4 centimetres wide. Its category is lacquerware.

The record for the original box reads only: a work of the Heian period, with neither dimensions nor maker. The record for the copy names the man who made it, the year he made it, and its measurements.

With the paintings of the six realms, a Bunsei-era copy carried a prefectural listing; with the illustrated biography of Ippen, a copy of 1840 stood complete in twelve scrolls. A copy better served by the record has now appeared three times.

Consulting Them

Ninnaji, in Kyoto Prefecture, owns the booklets. They are a temple holding, not kept on permanent display.

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

The category field reads other. Not painting, not craft, not structure, and not calligraphy and books either. The Agency gives no reason.

Conditions of access can change, so check with the temple before travelling. The box is a separate property and will not necessarily be shown with them.