Gold and Silver Plated Openwork Flower Basket

Flowers Cut from Metal at Jinsho-ji

Sixteen shallow copper discs, each about the width of a dinner plate, are kept at Jinsho-ji, a Shingon temple on the plain northeast of Lake Biwa in Nagahama, Shiga. From a short distance they read as solid trays. Step closer and the metal opens into a lattice of curling stems and blossoms, cut clean through the surface so that light passes between the petals.

These are keko, trays that held flower petals during Buddhist services. At certain rites priests scatter paper or living petals to honor the buddhas, a practice called sange, and the petals were carried in a tray like these before being released over the assembly. Earlier keko were woven from bamboo, and a few such examples survive in the Shoso-in repository. The Jinsho-ji set belongs to a later taste for the same vessel rendered in worked metal.

Each disc measures roughly 28.5 centimeters across and just under four centimeters deep. A craftsman beat a flat sheet of copper into a low dish, then cut away the background to leave a design of hosoge karakusa, an idealized flowering scroll that combines lotus, peony, and pomegranate into blooms opening along a winding vine. The whole surface was then gilded, with silver added to petals and selected details on the outer face, so that gold and white catch the light differently as a tray turns.

Why These Trays Became a National Treasure

The set was first recognized as an Important Cultural Property in May 1937 and raised to National Treasure status in November 1952, registered under designation number 82. Rarity alone was not the reason. Decorative keko survive elsewhere, but this group is judged the finest in both design and technique among them.

What scholars single out is restraint inside complexity. The flowering scroll is dense and could easily turn stiff or fussy, yet the cutting stays fluid and the finishing never tips into over-polish. The chisel work carries a quiet elegance that later metalworkers rarely matched. For the history of Japanese metalcraft, the Jinsho-ji keko serve as a benchmark for what openwork gilding could achieve.

The national database records the period as Kamakura. Museum scholarship draws a finer line. The sixteen trays fall into two groups, and the five oldest, the most accomplished in cutting and design, are dated to the late Heian period around the twelfth century, while the remaining eleven are placed in the fourteenth-century Nanboku-cho era. Read together, the set shows how a single design idea was repeated and varied across roughly two centuries.

What to Look For

Begin at the center of any tray and follow the design outward. The pattern radiates in three directions and repeats in three matching zones, a balanced scheme that holds the busy scroll together. On the outer face the metal is not simply pierced but carved in low relief, a technique called sukibori, so the blossoms sit slightly proud of their ground. Fine lines incised into the flower centers add a second, quieter layer of detail.

Color is the next thing to notice. Gilding covers both faces, but silver picks out petals and chosen accents only on the outside. Where the two meet, the warm gold and cooler silver separate the parts of each flower without any added pigment. A gilded rim binding, or fukurin, runs around the edge of every disc.

Turn a tray over and it reveals how it was used. Three small rings are fixed to the underside of each one. Braided cords pass through them and gather into a decorative knot, finishing in a gilded pendant shaped like a tall eight-sided cone. Hung in a row, the trays would have swung gently as petals were lifted out.

Not every piece stays at the temple at once. Two of the sixteen are housed at the Kyoto National Museum, and members of the set have traveled to exhibitions abroad, including loans to museums in the United States. A visitor hoping to see one particular tray should expect the display to change.

The Temple of Bush Clover

Jinsho-ji was founded in 895 by order of Emperor Uda and counts as the oldest temple in Nagahama. In its early centuries it grew into a large complex said to have held more than three hundred buildings. War and fire reduced it over time. The Azai lords rebuilt it during the sixteenth century, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi later paid for major repairs.

Many local visitors know the temple for its garden rather than its metalwork. Around twenty thousand stems of bush clover, or hagi, flower across the grounds in early autumn, drawing crowds for the pink and white blossoms that nod over the paths. Tradition holds that the shogun Ashikaga Takauji planted the first of them in the mid-fourteenth century, after stopping at the temple on his way home from a reconciliation with his brother. The temple keeps other treasures as well, among them a standing thousand-armed Kannon carved in relief.

The grounds sit about three and a half kilometers from JR Nagahama Station, a short taxi ride or a local bus to the Jinsho-ji-mae stop. Drivers reach it in roughly ten minutes from the Nagahama interchange on the Hokuriku Expressway, and parking is available. Nagahama itself rewards a longer stay, with the preserved merchant district around Kurokabe Square and boats from the lakefront to the island shrine of Chikubushima.

The temple treasures are shown by appointment only, generally on weekday and weekend afternoons, and the keko are not always on view. Anyone set on seeing them should arrange a visit in advance and confirm what will be on display.