National Treasure

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.

Discover Tawaraya Sōtatsu's masterpiece of Japanese ink painting, "Lotus Pond and Waterfowl" (Renchi Suikin-zu), held by the Kyoto National Museum. This National Treasure hanging scroll, painted in the early Edo period in ink alone, quietly sets two lotus stems and two little grebes in dialogue to evoke the passage of a summer. This guide introduces the painting's artistic value, the reasons for its designation, its highlights, and the surrounding sights of Kyoto's Higashiyama district.

Sesshu's View of Amanohashidate, a National Treasure in Kyoto, maps the famed sandbar from a sky-high viewpoint that never existed. An unsigned sketch turned icon.

The National Treasure Yamai no Sōshi paints twelfth-century illness with rare candour, watching the sick and the onlookers who laugh, stare, or look away.

At the Kyoto National Museum, the National Treasure Gaki Zoshi pictures hungry ghosts unseen by the living, its seven scenes moving from torment to salvation.

Faceless courtiers fill the picture hidden beneath the sutra text. This National Treasure at the Kyoto National Museum was copied over an abandoned scroll in 1192.

A Southern Song celadon vase of shimokabura form, a Japanese National Treasure with a smooth, crackle-free pale-blue glaze. Its kiln is still debated by scholars.

The National Treasure Nukatadera Garan narabini Jōrizu, held by the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura, Chiba, is a rare large-scale map painted in the late Nara period (8th century) on four joined panels of hemp cloth. Depicting the jōri land-grid of Heguri District in Yamato Province and the detailed precinct of Nukatadera at its lower center, the map is an irreplaceable primary source on ancient Japanese land administration and Buddhist architecture.

This National Treasure is Retired Emperor Go-Uda's autograph diary, brushed in 1319 in the margins of an annotated court almanac, now preserved in Sakura, Chiba.

A National Treasure near Tokyo: a Southern Song printing of the Hanshu in 61 fascicles, holding the earliest reliable Chinese record of Japan, the Wa people.

A complete Southern Song printing of the Book of the Later Han, kept in Sakura, whose account of the eastern peoples names Queen Himiko and an embassy of 57 CE.