Kofun

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.

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.

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.

Volume nine of the Yupian, a Chinese dictionary lost in China, survives in Japan as a Tang scroll. This Waseda National Treasure bears a Buddhist text dated 1021.

At the Tokyo National Museum, the gilt Dragon-Head Ewer fuses a Persian form, four engraved Pegasus, and an East Asian dragon. A National Treasure from Hōryū-ji.

Discover Jieshi Diao Youlan Daiwo, the world's oldest complete instrumental music manuscript. This 7th-century guqin tablature, designated a National Treasure of Japan, is preserved at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno, Tokyo.

Preserved at Waseda University Library in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, this National Treasure is the sole surviving volume of a lost 100-volume Chinese Confucian commentary. A Tang-dynasty handscroll that reached Japan in the Nara period, it bears the personal library seal of Empress Kōmyō. Discover its extraordinary journey, scholarly importance, and how to experience it today.

Spread across the foothills of Tenri City in Nara Prefecture, the Yamato Tumulus Group is a cluster of 24 ancient mounds dating from the late 3rd to early 4th century—the formative era of the Yamato polity. In 2014, three of its most significant mounds—Nomugi, Nakayama Otsuka, and Shimoikeyama Kofun—were designated a National Historic Site. With its unusual mix of keyhole and square-rear tombs, remarkable finds including special pedestal pottery and a silk-wrapped bronze mirror, and a setting along the ancient Yamanobe-no-michi path, the site offers a rare encounter with the very dawn of the Japanese state.

Kengoshizuka Kofun is a seventh-century octagonal mound in Asuka, restored in white stone in 2022 and thought to be the tomb of Empress Saimei and her daughter.

At the foot of Mount Miwa, the Makimuku Site preserves a 3rd-century building complex and 2,000 peach pits, central to the debate over Queen Himiko's Yamatai.

Woven in Tang-dynasty China in a Persian style, this Hōryū-ji National Treasure silk shows four winged-horse riders turning to shoot lions inside beaded roundels.

Discover the Haniwa Ushi, a nationally Important Cultural Property displayed at Karako-Kagi Archaeological Museum in Tawaramoto, Nara. Excavated in 1897 from Hagoda Tomb No. 1, this rare 6th-century cow-shaped haniwa is one of fewer than ten such examples ever found in Japan.

Four sixth-century decorated tumuli in Ukiha, Fukuoka. Their painted chambers show boats, birds, quivers, and suns, read as the dead's voyage to the afterlife.

A bronze five-pronged vajra bell at Shochi-in on Koyasan, made in Tang China and designated in 1928. An esoteric Buddhist implement, paired with a vajra in ritual.

A sandalwood shrine only 23 cm tall, carved in Tang China with twenty-five tiny deities and tied by tradition to the monk Kukai. A National Treasure on Mount Koya.

A National Treasure of Japan, the Wang Bo Collection Volume 28 is the world's oldest surviving manuscript of poetry by Tang-dynasty prodigy Wang Bo (649-676). Brought to Japan via the Kentōshi missions and once preserved at Kōfuku-ji Temple in Nara, this remarkable scroll preserves verses lost in China for over a thousand years.