Muromachi

Built in 1374, the Main Hall of Manpuku-ji in Masuda, Shimane is a National Important Cultural Property. The seven-by-seven-bay hip-roofed hall preserves Kamakura-period architectural traditions, and behind it lies one of Sesshu Toyo's celebrated four great gardens, together evoking the cultural flowering of the medieval Masuda clan.

Kongō-ji Niō-mon Gate in Hino City, Tokyo, is the main gate of Takahata Fudōson, one of the Three Great Fudō of the Kantō region. Built in the late Muromachi period as a three-bay, single-entrance two-story gate (sangen ikko rōmon), it was returned to its original two-story irimoya form during the 1959–1960 dismantling and restoration. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 1946, the gate houses a fierce pair of Muromachi-period Niō guardian statues. Just 35 minutes from Shinjuku by Keiō Line and a 5-minute walk from the station, it offers a rare encounter with medieval temple architecture amid the seasonal beauty of hydrangeas and autumn maples.

Kongoji Fudodo in Hino City, Tokyo is an early Muromachi-period temple hall rebuilt in 1342 and widely regarded as the oldest existing cultural-property building within Tokyo Metropolis. Designated a Nationally Important Cultural Property, the hall — five bays square with a hip-and-gable roof, a one-bay front canopy, and copper sheeting in thatched-roof profile — stands at the heart of Takahata Fudoson, one of the Kantō region's three great Fudō temples and the ancestral temple of Shinsengumi vice-commander Hijikata Toshizō.

Court robes, maki-e boxes, mirrors, 29 combs, and silver toiletries offered to the Kumano gods around 1390 survive nearly complete at the Kyoto National Museum.

At the Kyoto National Museum, this gold-on-indigo scroll is the sole survivor of a handwritten Goryeo Buddhist canon vowed in 1006 by a Korean queen dowager.

A National Treasure album at the Kyoto National Museum, holding 240-plus calligraphy fragments from the 8th to 16th centuries, once used to authenticate old writing.

Sesshu's View of Amanohashidate, a National Treasure in Kyoto, maps the famed sandbar from a sky-high viewpoint that never existed. An unsigned sketch turned icon.

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.

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.

Designated an Important Cultural Property in 1980, this 15th-century domaru armor at the Tokyo National Museum is a rare survival in which the cuirass, helmet, and large shoulder guards remain together as one original ensemble. Its distinctive katatsumadori lacing combined with the omodaka (water plantain) motif represents the artistic peak of Muromachi-period armor making.

Discover the Matsuya Katatsuki, an Important Cultural Property of Japan — a Chinese-made shouldered tea caddy that passed through the hands of shoguns and tea masters for over 500 years. Now housed at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo's Aoyama district.

A small ink scroll the Chan master Xutang Zhiyu brushed near age eighty for a Japanese monk, slashed by a servant in 1637 and now a National Treasure in Tokyo.

Brushed in 1325 by the Yuan master Gulin Qingmao for his disciple Betsugen Enshi, this farewell verse, once owned by Oda Nobunaga, is now a National Treasure.

Just 24.2 cm tall, this National Treasure at Tokyo's Nezu Museum is a peak of Southern Song bird-and-flower painting, attributed to Li Anzhong and shown only rarely.

Painted by the Song court artist Li Di and dated 1197, this National Treasure pairs a white and a red cotton rose, one flower as it shifts colour across a day.

A fan-shaped Song-dynasty painting of one apple branch, its blossoms ranging from bud to full bloom. Now a National Treasure at Tokyo's Ebara Hatakeyama Museum.

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.