Peacock Pattern Ribbon

Kujakumon-kei: A Peacock-Adorned Bronze Chime Dated 1208

Small enough to cradle in two hands, this bronze plate is easy to overlook in a display case. Its back tells you otherwise. Cast directly into the metal, on either side of the central boss, runs a short line of characters that fixes the object to a single autumn: the tenth month of Jōgen 2, the year 1208. The piece is a kei, a struck chime used in Japanese Buddhist ritual, and it is registered as an Important Cultural Property held in Nara Prefecture.

A kei rarely sits still on a shelf when in use. It hangs from a wooden frame, the keika, placed beside the priest who leads a service. At set moments he taps the plate near the center with a small mallet, and a high, clear tone rings out to mark the passage from one part of the rite to the next. The instrument reached Japan from China, where its distant ancestor was a stone chime tuned by thickness. Japanese examples are nearly always cast in metal and shaped as a low, symmetrical mountain, with loops along the upper edge for suspension and a raised striking boss at the center where the mallet falls.

Reading the Bronze

The maker organized both faces around a single motif. At the center sits the striking boss, modeled as a lotus seen from above with eight double petals. To its left and right, a pair of peacocks face inward, wings spread toward the flower, cast in relief so that the birds and the blossom read as one composition. The plate itself has a deeply curved profile, the arc cut more sharply than on many surviving chimes, which gives the object a taut, springy silhouette when hung.

The peacock was a deliberate choice. In Japanese Buddhist thought the bird was believed to devour venomous snakes and insects, and it lent its name and image to Kujaku Myōō, the Peacock Wisdom King, a deity invoked to drive off poison and calamity. A peacock cast onto a ritual instrument was both an ornament and a small statement of protective power. The same bird turns up on lacquer, textiles, and metalwork across the period, but on a chime that a priest would strike day after day it carried particular weight.

Turn the plate over and the purpose sharpens. The inscription, cast rather than later incised, reads as a dedication on behalf of a cleric of the rank hōgen named Shūsei: a prayer that he leave suffering, gain joy, and be reborn in the Pure Land. The date follows, given in the reign era and in the old sexagenary cycle. A chime made not as a generic temple fitting but as a memorial offering for one named person, with the wish spelled out in the metal, is unusual enough to repay a slow look.

Why It Was Designated

Most surviving kei carry no date at all, which makes them hard to place beyond a rough century. This one carries its year cast into the bronze, and that single fact lifts it out of the anonymous mass. A dated, securely attributable object becomes a yardstick against which undated pieces can be measured, and conservators value such benchmarks highly. The chime was registered as an Important Cultural Property on 15 June 1978.

There is a second reason the piece matters. Specialists at the Agency for Cultural Affairs judge it to be the work of the same caster, or the same workshop, that produced a National Treasure kei dated just one year later, in Jōgen 3 (1209). That National Treasure was made by the priest Sukekiyo and given to the golden hall of Mirokuji, the Buddhist temple that once stood within the precincts of Usa Jingū in Kyushu. Set the two side by side and you can follow a single hand at work across two seasons: the same lotus boss, the same facing peacocks, the same confident casting. The 1208 chime is, in effect, the slightly earlier sibling of one of Japan's most celebrated ritual bronzes.

Where to See a Kei Like This

A note of realism for anyone hoping to stand in front of the object itself. The 1208 chime is privately owned, and the national record lists no public custodial institution for it, so it is not on regular display. Travelers to Nara will not find it in a temple hall or a permanent gallery, and the article you are reading is the closest most visitors will come to it.

The good news is that its near-twin can be seen. The companion National Treasure of 1209 is shown at the treasure hall of Usa Jingū in Oita Prefecture, where it is hung on a stand so that both the peacock face and the inscribed back are visible. Opening days at the hall have varied in recent years, so confirm the current schedule before traveling. Closer to home in Nara, the Nara National Museum holds a bronze peacock-design kei in its collection, and the Tokyo National Museum owns another, both of which surface in rotating displays of Buddhist ritual implements. Seeing any one of them gives a true sense of the type: the cool weight of the bronze, the hung-mountain shape, and the bright tone that, even in a silent gallery, the object seems to promise.