Edo

A National Treasure at the Tokyo National Museum: a Southern Song three-scroll set by Liang Kai of a gaunt Buddha and snowy peaks, held by the Ashikaga shoguns.

A Southern Song scroll attributed to Ma Yuan, this National Treasure shows a lone traveler hurrying under a folded umbrella as wind and rain cross towering peaks.

Discover the Seisetsu Shōchō Bokuseki 'Yo Kantaiji Zōsu Hōgo' at Eisei Bunko in Tokyo. This Important Cultural Property is a Dharma instruction brushed by the Yuan-Chinese Zen master Seisetsu Shōchō (1274–1339), who came to Japan in 1326 and shaped early Japanese Zen. Explore its history, artistic highlights, and visitor information.

An Important Cultural Property at the National Archives of Japan, compiled from castaway Daikokuya Kodayu's account of Russia, with illustrated scrolls and maps.

A late sword guard by Tsuchiya Yasuchika, signed Tōu. In pierced suaka copper, drying fishing nets meet a flight of plovers, touched with his rubbed gold inlay.

Hosokawa Family Documents at Tokyo's Eisei Bunko: the 2013 designation of 266 papers holds 58 Oda Nobunaga letters; a 2025 addition raised the total to 9,612.

A bokuseki scroll at the Tokyo National Museum: a verse brushed by the Southern Song Zen monk Beijian Jujian in a Suzhou pavilion in 1229, an early tea scroll.

Discover the Warikōdai Chawan, a 16th-century Korean tea bowl with a daringly cross-cut foot ring, designated an Important Cultural Property and housed at the Ebara Hatakeyama Museum in Shirokanedai, Tokyo. A masterpiece beloved by industrialist-tea master Hatakeyama Sokuō.

The Gotoh Museum in Setagaya, Tokyo, preserves the National Treasure 'Six Patriarch Shouldering a Pole,' a thirteenth-century Southern Song ink painting bearing the seal of the painter Chokuō. Rendered in the delicate mōryōga style with washes of pale ink and selective accents of dark ink, the scroll depicts Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, at the life-changing moment he hears the Diamond Sutra. An inscription by Chan master Enkei Kōmon dates the work with unusual precision. Discover the history, artistic value, and visiting information for this masterpiece.

Held by the Nezu Museum in Tokyo's Minami-Aoyama district, Fishing Village at Sunset (attributed to Muqi) is a National Treasure and one of the supreme achievements of Southern Song ink painting. A scene from the famous Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, it bears the seal of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and is exhibited only rarely, every few years.

Standing halfway up Mt. Kirihata in Awa City, Tokushima, the Kirihataji Daitō is a National Important Cultural Property rescued from the early Meiji abolition of Buddhist temples. Originally commissioned in 1607 by Toyotomi Hideyori to pray for the repose of his father Hideyoshi's soul, it was dismantled from Osaka's Sumiyoshi Shinra-ji and painstakingly rebuilt at Kirihataji, the 10th temple on the Shikoku Pilgrimage, over roughly a decade. Its unique five-bay-square-over-three-bay-square form is the only surviving example of its type in Japan.

Jōrokuji Kannon-dō is an elegant two-tiered Buddhist hall in Tokushima City, rebuilt in 1648 and designated a National Important Cultural Property of Japan. Part of the Sōtō Zen temple Jōrokuji—affectionately called the "Hōryū-ji of Awa" for its concentration of historic buildings—the hall enshrines a nearly five-meter-tall Heian-period statue of Avalokiteshvara that gave the temple its name. This guide covers the hall's architecture, history, nearby attractions, and essential travel information for international visitors.

Jōrokuji's main hall was once the abbot's quarters, rebuilt in 1629 for a lord's daughter. Its chamfered pillars mark early-Edo work and a blood-ceiling tradition.

Discover Daisendō, a registered Tangible Cultural Property in Tsurugi Town, Tokushima. This Edo-period Buddhist hall serves as the 13th stop on the Haba Shikoku pilgrimage—a local 88-temple route created so that ordinary villagers could experience the spiritual journey of Shikoku.

Tucked into a hillside in Tsurugi-chō, Tokushima Prefecture, Kaize-dō is the 34th station of the Haba Shikoku 88 Sacred Places, a local Edo-period miniature version of Shikoku's great pilgrimage. Originally founded in 1616 and rebuilt in 1816, this three-bay pyramid-roofed hall with open south and east sides was registered as a national tangible cultural property in 2017, and it preserves a vivid trace of rural folk Buddhism in the Shikoku mountains.

The Former Oiso Family Residence in Matsushige, Tokushima, is a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property built during the late Edo period as the home of the Oiso family, who prospered through indigo dye manufacturing. Featuring a distinctive gable roof with plaster walls and a robust timber framework, it preserves the legacy of the Awa indigo industry. Now maintained within the grounds of Kashino Club.

The 1843 gate of Saikyoji in Mima, Tokushima, is a three-bay yakuimon whose outer eaves are boarded and carved with clouds, the detail that put it in the register.

Saikyoji's 1858 main hall in Mima, Tokushima, is a registered property. Its 14 by 16 metre plan follows Jodo Shinshu practice, and dragon and tiger guard the porch.

Built in 1810 at Jizoji, fifth temple of the Shikoku pilgrimage in Tokushima, this plastered storehouse holds an octagonal revolving sutra case. Registered in 2011.

This hall of Kobo Daishi at Jizoji in Tokushima dates from 1711 to 1716 and was remodelled late in the Edo period. Carved transoms, celestial women on the ceiling.