National Treasure

A National Treasure tachi forged by Bizen Saburo Kunimune in the Kamakura period, handed down in the Owari Tokugawa family and held by Nagoya's Tokugawa Art Museum.

Oda Nobunaga's prized tachi, seized from Azuchi Castle after Honno-ji in 1582. A National Treasure by Kamakura master Nagamitsu, now at Nagoya's Tokugawa Art Museum.

This National Treasure tachi by the Ko-Bizen smith Masatsune was shogun Yoshimune's 1745 retirement gift to the Owari Tokugawa, now at Nagoya's Tokugawa Art Museum.

A rare signed tachi by Mitsutada, founder of Bizen's Osafune school, given by Shogun Tsunayoshi to the Owari Tokugawa in 1698. Now a National Treasure in Nagoya.

A National Treasure tachi dated 1292 and the only blade signed Rai Magotaro, an alias of master Rai Kunitoshi. Once Ieyasu's, now at the Tokugawa Art Museum.

Named for its kitchen-knife shape, the National Treasure Hocho Masamune passed from Tokugawa Ieyasu to the Owari family. See its pierced openwork carving in Nagoya.

Japan's oldest illustrated Tale of Genji, a 12th-century National Treasure at Nagoya's Tokugawa Art Museum, shown a few weeks each November to protect its pigments.

Copied in 1160 by Fujiwara no Koreyuki, these National Treasure scrolls at the Kyoto National Museum set a complete Heian poetry anthology on ashide-e paper.

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.

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.