Heian

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A National Treasure near Tokyo: the Song-dynasty Shiji printed by Huang Shanfu, the oldest complete copy of the three-commentary edition, all 130 chapters intact.

At the Tokyo National Museum, the National Treasure Akikusa-mon Tsubo is a 12th-century Atsumi-ware jar incised with autumn grasses and dragonflies, found in 1942.

A National Treasure at the Tokyo National Museum: an 8.4-meter scroll of dyed papers, its 48 waka written in cursive kana, the script that became hiragana.

Held at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno, Ishinpō (Nakarai Family Copy) is the oldest surviving medical encyclopedia in Japan, compiled by the court physician Tanba no Yasuyori in 984 during the Heian period. Its thirty handscrolls preserve passages from more than two hundred Chinese medical texts of the Sui and Tang dynasties, many of them otherwise lost, making this National Treasure an indispensable key to the history of East Asian medicine, language, and calligraphy.

The Uta-awase (Jikkanbon), or 'Poetry Contests in Ten Scrolls,' is Japan's oldest compiled anthology of courtly poetry matches. Held at the Sonkeikaku Bunko in Komaba, Tokyo, this National Treasure was conceived by the regent Fujiwara no Yorimichi in the 11th century to gather 46 poetry contests spanning 170 years, from the Ninna era (885-889) to 1056. Surviving as an unfinished working draft with editorial annotations and over ten distinct calligraphic hands, the five scrolls preserved by the Maeda Ikutokukai Foundation, together with companion scrolls at Yomei Bunko and the Tokyo National Museum, form one of the most important documents in classical Japanese literature.