The Lotus Sutra (opening and Closing)

A Heian Sutra That Survived Whole

Asakusa is known for its great red lantern, its drifting incense, and the crowds that move beneath the gate toward the main hall. The temple's single National Treasure, though, is rarely on view there at all. The Lotus Sutra called the Sensōji-kyō is a set of ten scrolls copied in the eleventh century, during the Heian period, and it now lives a short walk across Ueno on long-term deposit at the Tokyo National Museum.

The set pairs the eight scrolls of the Lotus Sutra itself with two companion texts. One is the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings (Muryōgikyō), read as a prologue, and the other is the Sutra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Kanfugenkyō), read as a closing. Japanese tradition treats these three works as one continuous scripture, the threefold Lotus Sutra, which is why the designation carries the phrase "with the opening and closing sutras."

What lifts this set above many of its peers is simple: nothing is missing. Heian sutra sets often survive only as single scrolls, scattered across separate collections and prized one sheet at a time. Here all ten scrolls remain together, and so do the fittings that were made for them.

Why Ten Scrolls Earned the Highest Rank

The Sensōji-kyō was designated a National Treasure on June 9, 1951. Its standing rests on a pairing that is hard to find in one object: a complete text and a complete physical survival. A single person brushed all ten scrolls in the rounded, native Japanese hand known as wayō, keeping the characters small and even across thousands of lines. The red reading marks scattered through the text were added by later hands, but the writing itself is the work of one devoted scribe.

Folk memory long credited the calligraphy to Ono no Tōfū, one of the Heian period's three celebrated brush masters. The dates do not line up, since Tōfū worked in the tenth century and the scrolls belong to the eleventh, so scholars treat the link as a tradition rather than a fact. The anonymity changes little. The point of such a sutra was never the fame of the hand but the merit earned by the copying.

Equally rare is the survival of the mountings. Sutra scrolls were handled, rerolled, and repaired for centuries, and their original axles and cords almost never last. On the Sensōji-kyō they do, which lets a visitor see a Heian decorated sutra close to the state in which it left the workshop.

Reading the Decoration

Start with the paper. Each sheet was treated by blowing clove dye across its surface, giving the covers and frontispiece panels a deep brown cast while the body sheets stay paler. Over that ground, tiny flecks of cut gold leaf were scattered the length of every scroll, so the surface catches light as the paper turns.

On the writing sheets, fine ruled lines drawn in gold ink frame the columns of text. At the head of each scroll sits a frontispiece painted in gold and silver ink, a small image meant to capture the meaning of the sutra that follows. The first scroll opens with Shakyamuni preaching to an assembly, the scene that sets the whole text in motion.

Then look at the ends. The roller knobs are inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a pattern of butterflies and birds, and the cord that ties each scroll is a flat braid woven from four colors of thread. These are the parts that usually vanish. Seeing them here, made for these scrolls and still attached, is the closest thing to standing in an eleventh-century scriptorium.

Seeing the Scrolls, and Seeing Asakusa

Because the scrolls are light-sensitive and fragile, the museum shows them only at intervals, usually one scroll at a time in the rotation of national treasures in the Japanese Gallery. They are not on permanent display, so anyone making a special trip should check the current exhibition list before going. The scrolls are not shown at Sensōji itself.

That makes for an easy pairing of two districts. The Tokyo National Museum sits in Ueno Park, ringed by the city's main art and science museums and an easy stop for a half day. Asakusa, two subway stops away, is where the sutra's story began: the Kaminarimon gate, the Nakamise shopping street leading to the main hall, and the quiet treasures of a temple whose records reach back more than a thousand years.