Four Gold Characters, Fourteen Centuries of Questions
Near the base of a straight, single-edged blade owned by Shitennoji temple in Osaka, four Chinese characters appear in gold inlay: 丙子椒林, read in Japanese as heishi shorin. The sword takes its name from them. What they actually mean has been argued over since at least the Edo period, and the argument is not settled.
The blade itself is 65.8 centimeters long, forged in the Asuka period, the seventh century, before the curved Japanese sword existed. It has survived above ground, passed from hand to hand rather than dug out of a tomb, for some fourteen hundred years. In 1952 the Japanese government designated it a National Treasure.
Temple tradition holds that it belonged to Prince Shotoku (574 to 622), the semi-legendary statesman who founded Shitennoji itself.
A Sword from Before the Japanese Sword
When most people picture a Japanese sword, they picture a katana: a curved blade with a ridge line running down the center of each face. The Heishi Shorin-ken predates that form by centuries. It is a chokuto, a straight sword, made in the kiriha-zukuri style, in which the ridge sits close to the cutting edge and the blade presents a wide, flat upper surface. The back of the blade is rounded, and the edge carries a faint inward curve, the opposite of the outward curve that later swords would adopt.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the forging in close detail. The steel shows a tightly packed grain of small wood-ring patterns mixed with straight grain. The temper line is a narrow, straight band with a shallow undulation, rich in the fine martensite crystals that sword connoisseurs prize. The tang remains in its original, unaltered state.
One detail rewards a slow look. The tang once had a hole for a suspension cord, the fitting by which such swords hung from the belt in continental fashion. Corrosion has eaten away part of it, leaving a half-moon notch at the tang's end. Specialists read that small loss as evidence of just how long the sword has been in the world.
The Riddle of the Inscription
The four characters are inlaid in gold on the front face of the blade near the base, written in an archaic Chinese seal script. For centuries the temple read them differently, as 丙毛槐林, and interpreted them as a reference to Soga no Umako, the powerful sixth-century minister who fought alongside Prince Shotoku.
In the Edo period, scholars proposed a reading that most specialists now favor: 丙子 (heishi, or hinoe-ne) is a year in the sixty-year Chinese calendrical cycle, and 椒林 (shorin) is likely the name of the swordsmith. If that is right, the candidate years that fall within plausible range are 556 and 616.
Either date places the sword's manufacture in the era of the Sui dynasty in China, and many researchers consider the blade a continental import, brought across the sea during the period when Japan was absorbing Buddhism, writing, and statecraft from the mainland. The official designation record is careful on this point: the theories remain theories, and the question awaits further study.
Why It Is a National Treasure
Swords of this age are not unknown in Japan. Archaeologists recover them from sixth- and seventh-century tombs with some regularity. But excavated blades emerge rusted, pitted, often reduced to fragments. The Heishi Shorin-ken never went into the ground. Apart from the Shoso-in repository in Nara, transmitted swords of this antiquity barely exist, and the designation record calls this one's quality and completeness rare among all ancient swords surviving in Japan.
The state recognized that early. The sword received protection as a National Treasure under the prewar system on September 3, 1912, within weeks of the Taisho era's beginning, and was re-designated under the current law on March 29, 1952, with designation number 54.
A companion blade shares its history. The Shichisei-ken, or Seven-Star Sword, also a National Treasure and also held by Shitennoji, carries a gold-inlaid pattern of the Big Dipper and is likewise said to have been Prince Shotoku's. The two are usually discussed as a pair, the finest ancient swords transmitted outside the Shoso-in.
Seeing the Sword, and Seeing Shitennoji
Here a visitor needs honest guidance. The Heishi Shorin-ken is kept on deposit at the Tokyo National Museum and goes on public display only rarely. Recent appearances include the museum's national treasure exhibition in 2014, the Prince Shotoku 1,400th memorial exhibition at the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts in 2021, and the Japan National Treasure Exhibition at the same Osaka museum in the spring of 2025. Anyone hoping to stand before the original should watch exhibition announcements from these institutions.
Shitennoji itself, in the Tennoji district of Osaka, repays a visit regardless. Founded in 593, it ranks as Japan's first state-sponsored Buddhist temple, and its central precinct preserves an ancient layout in which the gate, five-story pagoda, main hall, and lecture hall stand on a single north-south axis. The temple's treasure house mounts rotating exhibitions of its holdings, and Shitennoji also owns a full reproduction of the Heishi Shorin-ken forged in 1979 by the swordsmith Gassan Sadakazu II, which has appeared in exhibitions alongside temple panels of both famous swords.
The temple grounds host a lively flea market on the 21st and 22nd of each month, and the surrounding Uemachi plateau offers an easy walk to Tennoji Park, the Osaka Museum of Fine Arts, and the Abeno Harukas tower. Shitennoji-mae Yuhigaoka Station on the Tanimachi subway line sits five minutes from the gates; JR Tennoji Station is about twelve minutes on foot.
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Q&A
- Can I see the Heishi Shorin-ken at Shitennoji?
- Not on a normal visit. The original is deposited at the Tokyo National Museum and is shown only during special exhibitions. Shitennoji's treasure house displays other temple holdings, and a modern reproduction of the sword forged in 1979 has been exhibited there.
- What does the inscription mean?
- The favored reading since the Edo period takes 丙子 as a cyclical year, pointing to 556 or 616, and 椒林 as the maker's name. The temple's older tradition read the characters as a reference to the minister Soga no Umako. The official record states that the question remains open.
- Did the sword really belong to Prince Shotoku?
- That is the temple tradition, and the sword's age makes it chronologically possible, but no document proves ownership. Historians treat the attribution as a venerable legend attached to an unquestionably ancient blade.
- How is it different from a katana?
- It is straight rather than curved, with a slight inward bend, and its ridge line runs close to the edge instead of down the middle of the blade. These features mark it as a chokuto, the continental-style sword used in Japan before the curved sword developed in the Heian period.
Basic Information
| Name | Heishi Shorin-ken (丙子椒林剣) |
|---|---|
| Designation | National Treasure (crafts), designated March 29, 1952; protected under the prewar system from September 3, 1912 |
| Quantity | 1 sword |
| Period | Asuka period (7th century) |
| Dimensions | Blade length 65.8 cm; width at base 2.5 cm; width at tip 1.7 cm; point length 1.6 cm |
| Owner | Shitennoji temple, Osaka |
| Current location | On deposit at the Tokyo National Museum; displayed only during special exhibitions |
| Temple address | 1-11-18 Shitennoji, Tennoji-ku, Osaka |
| Access to Shitennoji | 5 min walk from Shitennoji-mae Yuhigaoka Station (Tanimachi Line); about 12 min from JR Tennoji Station |
References
- 国指定文化財等データベース（文化庁）丙子椒林剣
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/201/341
- 文化遺産オンライン 丙子椒林剣
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/125737
- 和宗総本山 四天王寺 公式サイト
- https://www.shitennoji.or.jp/
- WANDER 国宝 丙子椒林剣
- https://wanderkokuho.com/201-00341/
Last verified: 2026.06.10