Enryaku Change Ceremony

Enryaku Kotaishiki: An Early Heian Law and the Sanskrit Text on Its Reverse

In 803, officials of a recently created auditing bureau presented Emperor Kanmu with a set of forty-one rules covering one of the most error-prone moments in provincial government: the day one governor handed his post to the next. That compilation came to be known as the Enryaku Kotaishiki, after the Enryaku era in which it was issued. The scroll kept at Ishiyamadera in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, is an early manuscript of this code, and in 1953 it was designated a National Treasure.

The work carries a formal title, Sentei Kotaishiki, and is sometimes called the Shokokushi Kotaishiki, the "transfer code for provincial governors." Its subject sounds dry until you consider what was at stake. A governor (kokushi) sent out from the capital controlled tax grain, weapons, official seals, and account books. When his term ended, all of it had to pass cleanly to his successor, and any shortfall had to be explained. Quarrels over missing rice and unbalanced ledgers were common, and an unresolved one could stall a man's career in the capital for years.

Why the Code Was Written

Around 797, the court established a new bureau called the Kageyushi to supervise these handovers. Its task was to check the outgoing governor's accounts and, if everything balanced, to issue a clearance document called a geyu. Without that certificate, a returning official could not formally close out his term. The bureau needed clear written standards, so its head, Sugano no Mamichi, worked with colleagues including Akishino no Yasuhito to gather the relevant precedents into a single reference.

The result is unusual among early Japanese law books because it shows its sources. Rather than rewriting the rules in one smooth voice, the compilers quoted their authorities directly: clauses from the ritsuryo codes, imperial edicts, directives from the Council of State, ministry orders, and rulings by legal officials. Reading it, you can see exactly which office issued which instruction. That transparency is a large part of why historians value it.

The Enryaku Kotaishiki was the first of three such codes. A second, the Jogan Kotaishiki, followed later in the ninth century and extended the rules to officials based in the capital, not only provincial governors. A third, the Engi Kotaishiki, appeared in 921. The full original texts were largely lost over the centuries, which leaves the Ishiyamadera scroll as one of the most important surviving witnesses to the earliest of them.

The Other Side of the Paper

What makes this scroll doubly remarkable is what was written on its back. At some point in the tenth century, the paper was turned over and reused for a Buddhist study text, a primer in Siddham, the Indian script used to write Sanskrit syllables for chanting and ritual. The text on the reverse is titled the Nantenjiku Shittan Juhassho, and it is thought to be in the hand of the monk Junyu (890 to 953).

Junyu was the third head of Ishiyamadera and is remembered as the figure who revived it as a center of learning. A grandson of the renowned scholar-statesman Sugawara no Michizane, he specialized in Siddham and copied and collected scriptures on a scale that earned the temple its scholarly reputation. Old documents that had outlived their use made convenient writing paper, and because Junyu prized his own religious notes, the secular text on the front was preserved almost by accident. Several of Ishiyamadera's National Treasures survive in just this way, among them fragments of provincial tax records and a household census, along with old copies of Chinese classics, each carrying Buddhist writing on its reverse.

A legend clings to Junyu's manuscripts. In 921 he accompanied his teacher Kangen to the mausoleum of Kukai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, on Mount Koya. When Junyu touched the master's robe, a fragrance is said to have settled on his hand and lingered, passing into everything he later wrote. For this reason his surviving scriptures are known collectively as the Nioi no Shogyo, the "fragrant scriptures." The verso of this scroll is counted among his autograph works, though it sits under its own National Treasure listing rather than within that named set.

Visiting Ishiyamadera

Ishiyamadera stands on a wooded slope above the Seta River, where the water leaves Lake Biwa, in the city of Otsu. Temple tradition holds that it was founded in 747 at the wish of Emperor Shomu by the monk Roben, and it grew into one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the Heian court. Aristocratic women in particular made the journey, a practice called the Ishiyama mode, and the temple turns up again and again in classical literature. Murasaki Shikibu is said to have conceived The Tale of Genji here while on retreat, and a small room in the main hall is still pointed out as the spot.

The temple takes its name, "stone mountain," from the dramatic outcrops of wollastonite that break through the grounds, a formation protected as a Natural Monument. Buildings sit directly on the pale rock. Two of them are National Treasures in their own right: the main hall, built out over the slope on a wooden stage, and the elegant two-storied pagoda known as the tahoto, among the oldest of its kind in Japan. Ishiyamadera is also loved as a place of flowers, with plum and cherry in spring and maples in autumn.

One practical point matters for anyone hoping to see the Enryaku Kotaishiki itself. Fragile manuscripts like this are not on permanent display. They appear only now and then, in special exhibitions at the temple's treasure hall, the Hojoden, or at museums such as the Otsu City Museum of History. An ordinary visit lets you walk the grounds and see the National Treasure buildings, but catching the scroll in person means checking the exhibition schedule before you travel.

The temple is open from 8:00 to 16:30, with last entry at 16:00, and admission is 600 yen. It is about a ten-minute walk from Ishiyamadera Station on the Keihan line, or a short bus ride from JR Ishiyama Station. From Kyoto Station the trip takes roughly thirty minutes by train.