Kitayama Sho

A Heian Courtier's Manual of Palace Ritual

The Hokuzanshō is a privately compiled handbook of court procedure, written in the early eleventh century by Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041), one of the most accomplished poets and officials of his generation. Its ten original volumes set down how the imperial court was meant to function: the yearly round of observances at the palace, the administrative routine of the Council of State, and the duties that fell to a provincial governor. For generations afterward, courtiers reached for it whenever a question of correct precedent arose. The name comes from Kitayama, the wooded district north of Kyoto where Kintō retired late in life.

Kintō did not assemble the work in a single sitting. Several volumes grew out of particular requests. Two were prepared at the urging of the regent Fujiwara no Michinaga, the dominant figure of the age; another was written for Kintō's son Sadayori, and two more for his son-in-law Norimichi. The separate parts were drawn together into one book sometime between roughly 1012 and 1023. To compile it, Kintō worked from the diaries of his own forebears and from earlier court records, blending the practices of two rival ceremonial schools into a single working reference.

Twelve Scrolls in the Maeda Collection

The version preserved by the Maeda Ikutokukai in Tokyo takes the form of twelve handscrolls. It is not Kintō's own manuscript but a later transcription, copied out by the Kamakura period at the latest. Tradition assigns the calligraphy to Fujiwara no Korefusa (1030–1096), a grandson of the renowned Fujiwara no Yukinari and an inheritor of the Sesonji school of brushwork, though that attribution rests on long convention rather than firm proof.

The twelve scrolls do not line up evenly with the ten original volumes. Volume three survives here in three separate copies and volume five in two, while volume ten is missing altogether. That uneven shape is itself revealing. It shows the Hokuzanshō circulating and being recopied piece by piece, the way a living reference text gathers duplicates and sheds sections across the centuries.

Why It Counts Among the National Treasures

Japan designated the Maeda scrolls a National Treasure on November 14, 1953. Their importance rests on several things at once. As one of the fuller surviving witnesses to the Hokuzanshō, the set helps scholars reconstruct a text that guided court life for roughly five centuries. The brushwork, in the refined wayō (Japanese) style associated with the Sesonji lineage, carries its own art-historical weight. And the early date of the copy, no later than the Kamakura period, places it among the older transmissions of a work whose original is long lost.

A second designated version invites comparison. The Kyoto National Museum holds a ten-volume set once owned by the Sanjō family, and its tenth volume is the only surviving draft in Kintō's own hand. The backs of those sheets carry discarded documents pressed into reuse, among them some of the oldest known private letters written in kana script. Set side by side, the two National Treasures mark the distance between an author's working draft and the polished copies that carried his text into later ages.

Seeing the Work, and What Lies Nearby

The Maeda Ikutokukai keeps its holdings at Komaba in Tokyo's Meguro ward, under the name Sonkeikaku Bunko. This is a research library rather than a museum. Its rare books are open only to approved scholars, and the Hokuzanshō scrolls are not on regular public view. Travelers hoping to encounter the work in person should plan around special exhibitions, where the scrolls occasionally appear on loan.

The setting still rewards a visit. The Sonkeikaku Bunko building, completed in 1928, is itself an Important Cultural Property. It stands beside Komaba Park, where the former residence of the Maeda marquis, a striking Western-style house of 1929 and its adjoining Japanese wing, is open to the public without charge. For those drawn to the broader Maeda collection, the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum in Kanazawa runs a dedicated Maeda Ikutokukai gallery that rotates treasures from the family's holdings, and the Seisonkaku villa beside Kenrokuen Garden displays furnishings and arms from the same lineage.

Anyone curious about the text can study Kintō's autograph draft online. The Kyoto National Museum's tenth volume has been digitized and can be viewed through the national e-Museum platform, a rare chance to look closely at a thousand-year-old working manuscript.