Hossō Ruirin, Volume 197: A Surviving Scroll of a Lost Legal Encyclopedia
Only a few scrolls remain of a legal encyclopedia that once ran to more than two hundred volumes. This is one of them. Catalogued as volume 197 of the Hossō Ruirin, it is held by the Maeda Ikutokukai foundation in Tokyo and was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1935.
The Hossō Ruirin was compiled in the late Heian period, in the twelfth century, and is attributed to the scholar-official Fujiwara no Michinori, better known by his monastic name Shinzei. It gathered the laws of the ritsuryō system, the codes Japan had adapted from Tang China, and arranged them by subject, adding the opinions and rulings of the myōbō, the specialists in legal interpretation who advised the court. The book was a working tool, meant to help officials weigh charges and decide punishments. Tradition holds that it filled some 230 volumes, with one early account claiming as many as 730. Today four volumes and a scattering of fragments are all that is known to survive.
Volume 197 deals with the personnel system of the bureaucracy: the assessment and selection of officials, their dismissal, and related matters of rank and appointment. The portion held by the Maeda foundation is described as the zankan, or remaining part of the scroll, because the volume is now divided. Its opening leaf is kept separately at the National Archives in Tokyo, while the longer remainder is the scroll recognised here.
Why the Scroll Matters
So little of the Hossō Ruirin has come down to us that each surviving piece carries weight far beyond its length. The work preserves legal materials found in no other source, and it offers a window onto how the early court systematised its law and how Shinzei himself understood it. For historians of early Japanese government, a single scroll of personnel regulations is a rare primary record of how the state actually managed its officials.
This particular copy was made in the Kamakura period. A colophon at the end records that it was transcribed and collated on the first day of the sixth month of 1304, and the scroll belongs to the group of texts known as Kanazawa Bunko books. The Kanazawa Bunko was a library established by the Hōjō family in the thirteenth century at Kanazawa, in present-day Yokohama, and after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate its holdings were scattered across the country.
The route by which this scroll reached the Maeda family runs through that dispersal. Maeda Tsunanori, the fifth lord of the Kaga domain and an avid collector, gathered many Kanazawa Bunko texts. In 1722 several volumes of the Hossō Ruirin were presented to the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, and entered the shogunal library, eventually passing to the National Archives. The remaining part of volume 197 stayed in Kaga hands and is now kept in the Sonkeikaku Bunko, the Maeda collection.
Where the Text Can Be Seen
This is a research holding rather than a museum piece, so the scroll itself is not on general display. The Sonkeikaku Bunko, the library that preserves it, opens its rare books only to approved scholars. Visitors hoping to see objects from the wider Maeda collection are better served in Kanazawa, where the foundation's paintings, arms and crafts are shown in rotation at the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art and at Seisonkaku, the villa in Kenrokuen.
The text, though, is not out of reach. The companion volumes of the Hossō Ruirin held at the National Archives, including volume 192, the opening leaf of volume 197, and volume 200, have been digitised and can be read through the archive's online collection. The Sonkeikaku Bunko has also issued photographic facsimiles of its finest manuscripts, which place the brushwork of scrolls like this one within reach of any reader.
Approached this way, volume 197 is less a single object to track down than a thread into a larger story: a Heian law book copied in Kamakura, carried off from a fallen library, prized by a daimyo, split between a shogun and a samurai house, and finally held in trust for study.
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Q&A
- Can I see this scroll in person?
- Not as a casual visitor. The Sonkeikaku Bunko, which holds it, limits access to researchers who arrange permission in advance. To see works from the Maeda collection more generally, visit the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art or Seisonkaku in Kanazawa, where items are displayed in rotation.
- What is the ritsuryō system the book records?
- It was the legal and administrative framework Japan built from the seventh century, modelled on Tang Chinese codes. By the late Heian period its rules needed expert interpretation, which is the work the Hossō Ruirin set out to organise.
- Why is it called a "remaining scroll"?
- Volume 197 has been divided. Its first leaf is kept at the National Archives, and the longer remainder, the zankan, is the scroll held by the Maeda Ikutokukai and named in the designation.
- How old is this copy?
- The original work dates to the twelfth century, but this manuscript is a later copy: its colophon gives a transcription and collation date of 1304, in the Kamakura period.
Basic Information
| Name | Hossō Ruirin, Volume 197 (remaining scroll / Kanazawa Bunko copy) |
|---|---|
| Category | Calligraphy and Classical Books (written works) |
| Designation | Important Cultural Property |
| Date designated | 30 April 1935 (Shōwa 10) |
| Period | Original work, late Heian (12th century); this copy, Kamakura, 1304 |
| Format | One scroll, with a colophon dated the 1st day of the 6th month, 1304 |
| Owner | Maeda Ikutokukai (Sonkeikaku Bunko), Tokyo |
| Public access | Research holding; not on general display. Maeda collection items shown in Kanazawa |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs): Hossō Ruirin, Volume 197
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/201/7506
- Maeda Ikutokukai (official site)
- http://www.ikutokukai.or.jp/
- National Archives of Japan, Digital Archive: Hossō Ruirin
- https://www.digital.archives.go.jp/file/3145981.html
Last verified: 2026.06.22