Kamakura

Tobatsu Bishamonten at Kyoto's To-ji, a Tang-dynasty National Treasure that once guarded Rashomon gate. The 189.4 cm figure stands on the palms of the earth goddess.

At Kyoto's Sanjusangen-do stand the Twenty-Eight Attendants, National Treasure guardians of the Thousand-Armed Kannon: lifelike Kamakura figures carved in cypress.

The National Treasure Wind and Thunder Gods at Kyoto's Sanjusangendo are Japan's oldest such sculptures: Kamakura cypress figures with crystal eyes and bold realism.

At Kyoto's Senbon Shakado stand six unpainted wooden Kannon carved in 1224 by Jokei, Japan's only complete Kamakura set of six and now National Treasures.

The 45 rules Mongaku set in 1185 for the Jingoji temple he revived, written out by Nakayama Tadachika and stamped with Go-Shirakawa's vermilion handprints.

At Kyoto's Kitano Tenmangu, eight National Treasure scrolls of about 1219 trace Sugawara no Michizane from official to vengeful thunder god to the deity Tenjin.

A Kamakura portrait of Shinran drawn in ink lines alone by Sen'amidabutsu, son of Fujiwara no Nobuzane; one of the finest nise-e, owned by Hongwanji in Kyoto.

The forty-eight scroll illustrated biography of Honen at Chion-in, Kyoto, 548 metres long and among the largest picture scrolls; a National Treasure since 1955.

A thirteenth-century Southern Song painting of water buffalo attributed to Yan Ciping, owned by the Sen-oku Hakukokan; a National Treasure since 1957.

An unsigned National Treasure tanto by Soshu Sadamune at the Tokyo National Museum, once owned by a Karatsu lord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Tokugawa shoguns.

Discover the Kumano Junisha Gongen Mishōtai, an Important Cultural Property featuring thirteen Buddhist deities on a gilded bronze mirror disc. Explore the beauty of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism at Nara National Museum.

Held at the Kyushu National Museum, this Important Cultural Property is a Yuan-dynasty Chinese tea bowl from the 13th–14th century. A rare kiln effect at the boundary of its black and brown glazes produces a silvery 'rainbow' band that gave the bowl its name. Its provenance traces back to the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa.

A Tang hemp kesa at Enryakuji, said to have been brought from China by Saicho, a National Treasure since 1966 and a rare surviving example in hemp.

Kanshin-ji preserves a pair of gilt-bronze lotus vases, one inscribed 1330 (Gentoku 2). Late Kamakura kebyō for Shingon altar rites, Important Cultural Property.

The Two-Poem Kaishi by Fujiwara no Hidetō preserves two summer waka inscribed in 1201 by a young warrior-courtier just before his appointment to Retired Emperor Go-Toba's Bureau of Poetry. Dated precisely to the last day of the sixth month of Kennin 1, the scroll is a reference work for early Kamakura calligraphy and an Important Cultural Property since 1954.

Around 1180, fourteen poets including Saigyo and Jakuren each turned a Lotus Sutra chapter into a waka. The oldest poem papers extant, kept at Kyoto National Museum.

A Tang manuscript of the Book of Han, chapter 57 on poet Yang Xiong, at Kyoto National Museum. Taboo strokes and 948 reading marks trace ten centuries of study.

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.

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.

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.