Asuka
Osaka · 飛鳥Browse Osaka’s cultural heritage from the Asuka period (538 – 710). Filter by type and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
Discover the Shichiseiken, a 1,400-year-old National Treasure sword with Big Dipper gold inlay, originally owned by Prince Shotoku. Learn about this sacred blade housed at Tokyo National Museum and its connection to Shitennoji Temple in Osaka.
Discover the $11 million Yuteki Tenmoku tea bowl at Osaka's Museum of Oriental Ceramics. This 12th-century Song Dynasty masterpiece features mesmerizing oil-spot patterns and stands as Japan's only National Treasure-designated Yuteki Tenmoku. Complete visitor guide included.
Experience one of only three surviving Yohen Tenmoku tea bowls in the world at Osaka's Fujita Museum. This 12th-century National Treasure displays mysterious cosmic patterns that modern science cannot reproduce, valued at 1.7 billion yen.
The National Treasure celadon vase 'Bansei', fired at Southern Song China's Longquan kilns, passed from an empress to a Kyoto temple before reaching Izumi, Osaka.
A ninth-century Tang manuscript of China's first dictionary survives in Osaka as a National Treasure. See its seal-script columns at the Kyou Shooku library.
Osaka's Kyou Shooku library holds eleven Song-printed volumes of the Shiji jijie, the oldest Shiji commentary, a National Treasure once owned by Naito Konan.
Printed in Southern Song China in 1139, these 17 National Treasure volumes of the Maoshi zhengyi rest at Kyo-U Library in Osaka with Kanazawa Bunko seals.
The Tobiseiji Hanaike at the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, is a National Treasure regarded as the finest surviving example of Chinese Yuan-dynasty Longquan celadon with iron-spot decoration. Standing 27.3 cm tall in the elegant yuhuchun form, twenty-one iron spots dance across its jade-green glaze. Discover this masterpiece treasured in Japan for centuries through the Konoike merchants and the famed Ataka Collection.
The Heishi Shorin-ken, a 7th-century straight sword of Osaka's Shitennoji temple, bears a gold-inlaid inscription still debated today and a Prince Shotoku legend.
A herdboy rides his ox home through falling snow in Li Di's Returning Herd in Snow, a Southern Song National Treasure kept at Nara's Yamato Bunkakan museum.