Nara

Held at Enryaku-ji, this National Treasure is a single scroll of two Tang government permits issued to the monk Saichō in 804 and 805. Part is in his own hand.

A National Treasure at Onjo-ji near Lake Biwa, this Tang handscroll in ink line maps the deities of the Diamond World mandala, brought from China by Enchin in 855.

Discover the Bokuzeisho Volume 23 Fragment, an Important Cultural Property held by Shomyo-ji Temple and preserved at Kanagawa Prefectural Kanazawa Bunko. Explore how this rare divination manuscript reveals the scholarly world of medieval Japanese Buddhist learning.

In 749 Emperor Shomu granted silk and rice land to twelve temples. His autograph edict, blanketed in imperial seals, survives mysteriously at Heidenji, Shizuoka.

Kanbokujo, a National Treasure at the MOA Museum of Art in Atami, holds 311 calligraphy fragments from the 8th to 15th centuries, and a leaf by Fujiwara no Yukinari.

Held by the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, this Important Cultural Property is a fragment of an annual tax register prepared in 732 CE for Otagi District in Yamashiro Province, the area of present-day northern Kyoto. Preserving fifty-nine lines of original Nara-period writing, it is the most substantial keichō document surviving outside the Shōsōin treasury — a precious primary source for understanding ancient Japanese administration and society.

The National Treasure Senju Kannon at Fujiidera Temple in Osaka has 1,041 real hands, each palm once painted with an eye. Shown only on the 18th of each month.

The National Treasure celadon vase 'Bansei', fired at Southern Song China's Longquan kilns, passed from an empress to a Kyoto temple before reaching Izumi, Osaka.

A ninth-century Tang manuscript of China's first dictionary survives in Osaka as a National Treasure. See its seal-script columns at the Kyou Shooku library.

Osaka's Kyou Shooku library holds eleven Song-printed volumes of the Shiji jijie, the oldest Shiji commentary, a National Treasure once owned by Naito Konan.

Printed in Southern Song China in 1139, these 17 National Treasure volumes of the Maoshi zhengyi rest at Kyo-U Library in Osaka with Kanazawa Bunko seals.

Copied around 770 and once kept at Nara's Yakushiji, 387 National Treasure sutra scrolls survive at Osaka's Fujita Museum. Seals, mountings, visiting tips.

The Tobiseiji Hanaike at the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, is a National Treasure regarded as the finest surviving example of Chinese Yuan-dynasty Longquan celadon with iron-spot decoration. Standing 27.3 cm tall in the elegant yuhuchun form, twenty-one iron spots dance across its jade-green glaze. Discover this masterpiece treasured in Japan for centuries through the Konoike merchants and the famed Ataka Collection.

A herdboy rides his ox home through falling snow in Li Di's Returning Herd in Snow, a Southern Song National Treasure kept at Nara's Yamato Bunkakan museum.

On a plateau in eastern Oita, the Sato Kanga Site preserves a 7th-century district office where large timber buildings stood in a U-shape around a central hall.

The Gonga Kanga Site in Iida holds the buried offices and storehouses of the ancient Ina district government, in use from the late 7th to early 10th century.

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 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.

In 741 the monk Genbo commissioned 1,000 copies of this Kannon sutra. A lone scroll survives: a National Treasure of Nara calligraphy at the Kyoto National Museum.

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.