National Treasures of Kyoto

This late-Heian National Treasure at the Kyoto National Museum shows the dead Buddha rising from his golden coffin to preach a last sermon to his mother, Queen Maya.

The only screen painting surviving from Japan's Heian period, this 11th-century National Treasure from To-ji temple may depict the Tang poet Bai Juyi at his retreat.

A Kamakura-period National Treasure in Kyoto: Amida, gilded head to foot, rises beyond a mountain ridge. Cords once ran from his hands to believers at the deathbed.

Fujiwara no Kintō's only surviving autograph draft of the Hokuzanshō, held at the Kyoto National Museum. Its reverse hides two of Japan's oldest kana letters.

This National Treasure handscroll preserves love poems from the Kokin Wakashu in flowing kana on mica-printed Chinese paper, long credited to Ono no Tofu.

Court robes, maki-e boxes, mirrors, 29 combs, and silver toiletries offered to the Kumano gods around 1390 survive nearly complete at the Kyoto National Museum.

Kūkai's own ninth-century draft preface to the Diamond Sutra, at the Kyoto National Museum. Sixty-three lines whose deletions catch this monk mid-thought.

At the Kyoto National Museum, this gold-on-indigo scroll is the sole survivor of a handwritten Goryeo Buddhist canon vowed in 1006 by a Korean queen dowager.

At the Kyoto National Museum, the National Treasure Jōmyō Genron is an eight-scroll copy of Jizang's commentary on the Vimalakīrti Sutra, with colophons dated 706.

Forty Tang poems by Li Bai, Wang Wei, and others fill this 5.5-meter ninth-century cursive scroll at the Kyoto National Museum, a National Treasure since 1962.

This Tang-dynasty scroll at the Kyoto National Museum preserves 172 lines of the Shishuo Xinshu, the world's oldest surviving manuscript of the Chinese classic.

In 741 the monk Genbo commissioned 1,000 copies of this Kannon sutra. A lone scroll survives: a National Treasure of Nara calligraphy at the Kyoto National Museum.

A National Treasure at Kyoto National Museum, this 13th-century tachi is one of few blades signed by Norikuni, a refined master of Kyoto's Awataguchi school.

A National Treasure at the Kyoto National Museum, this tachi is the only blade securely attributed to the late-Heian smith Yasuie, unshortened and finely preserved.

A National Treasure album at the Kyoto National Museum, holding 240-plus calligraphy fragments from the 8th to 16th centuries, once used to authenticate old writing.

Copied in mid-Heian times, the Iwasaki-bon preserves Volumes 22 and 24 of Japan's first chronicle, layered with ancient reading marks and 15th-century notes.

Japan's oldest complete copy of the Nihon Shoki's Age of the Gods books, an autograph manuscript by the Kamakura scholar Urabe no Kanekata, dated around 1286.

Twenty-nine letter drafts by regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi fill a 9.8-meter scroll at the Kyoto National Museum, the clearest record of the Hosshoji school's origins.

A National Treasure: book nine of the Man'yoshu on silver-flecked indigo paper, late Heian period, and the only Aigami-bon to survive as a complete scroll.

Held at the Kyoto National Museum, the National Treasure Myōe Shōnin Kashū is a 13.5-meter handscroll transcribed in 1248 by the disciple Junshōbō Kōshin on the seventeenth memorial anniversary of his teacher, the Kamakura-period monk Myōe (1173–1232). The scroll gathers 155 waka poems, 112 by Myōe himself, and is the only complete surviving collection of his poetry. This guide introduces the work's background, its significance as a National Treasure designated in 1952, highlights such as Myōe's famous moon poem, visitor information for the Kyoto National Museum, and nearby Higashiyama sites including the World Heritage temple Kōzan-ji where Myōe lived and composed.