Heian

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.

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.

On the back of the Akihagi-jo handscroll lies a Tang copy of the Huainanzi's military chapter, older than the poems on its front. Both sides are National Treasures.

The Kujo family Engishiki at the Tokyo National Museum is the oldest surviving copy of Heian Japan's great legal code, valued for its red marks and verso documents.

Brushed in 1124, this is the oldest surviving Zen calligraphy. Cut in two long ago, its front half is National Treasure number one, the supreme tearoom scroll.

Held at the Tokyo National Museum, these eight National Treasure scrolls gather the ordination paper, court appointment, and Tang travel permits of the monk Enchin.

At the Tokyo National Museum, this Tang scroll is the oldest surviving copy of the early Tang writer Wang Bo, brushed around 685 to 689, a decade after his death.

Two white-bronze mirrors at the Tokyo National Museum, donated to Hōryūji by Empress Kōmyō in 736. Their backs cast a Daoist realm of sacred peaks and seas.