Manuscript of Kitayama Sho (Volume 10)

Kōhon Hokuzanshō, Volume Ten

Unroll this scroll and you are reading two documents at once. The front carries a working draft of a court protocol manual, set down in a brisk, businesslike hand around the opening of the eleventh century. Turn the sheets over and you meet something its author never expected anyone to study: twenty-five discarded documents, two of them private letters, that now rank among the oldest surviving samples of Japanese kana writing.

The scroll is Volume Ten of the Hokuzanshō, a handbook of court ceremony and administration compiled by Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041), among the most respected scholars and poets of the Heian court. Kept today at the Kyoto National Museum, it is written in ink on paper, stands 30.3 centimeters tall, and runs to nearly thirteen meters when fully extended.

What makes it singular is its status as a draft. This is not a fair copy made by a later scribe but Kintō's own composing manuscript, the only volume of his working text to come down to us.

A Reference Book for Running a Court

The Hokuzanshō was assembled in roughly ten books covering the annual observances of the imperial calendar, the procedures of the Council of State (Daijōkan), and the duties of officials posted to the provinces. For centuries afterward, courtiers consulted it when they needed to know how a rite had been performed before, or what precedent governed a point of administration. The work draws on a wide range of earlier records and texts, some of which survive nowhere else, which gives it a second life as a witness to books long lost.

The title points to its author's later years. Kintō withdrew to the Kitayama district in the hills north of the capital, and the compilation took its name, "Northern Mountain Notes," from that retreat.

Volume Ten carries the heading Rito Shinan, a guide to the work of provincial governors, the kokushi who administered the regions on the court's behalf. Among the draft volumes, this is the single one to survive, and it is regarded as Kintō's autograph.

Why It Became a National Treasure

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on March 29, 1952. The case for that ranking rests on two qualities that rarely meet in one object.

First, the front. Because this is the author's own draft rather than a clean later transcription, readers can follow how the text was shaped: where lines were inserted, where wording shifted. A finished manuscript hides such labor; a draft lays it open, and it lets scholars examine Kintō's brushwork directly. Some scholars have proposed that Fujiwara no Michinaga, the dominant statesman of the age, or his son Norimichi, played a part in the wider compilation, a connection traced through Kintō's daughter, though the extent of any such involvement remains uncertain.

Second, the back. Heian paper was costly, so Kintō wrote his draft on sheets already used for other purposes. Twenty-five reused documents make up the scroll, and many date from his term as Superintendent of the Imperial Police, the Kebiishi no Bettō, during the Chōtoku and Chōhō eras (995–1004). Two of them are letters written in kana, the phonetic script. These are believed to predate the year 1001 by about six years, and they preserve the flowing, connected cursive known as sōgana at an early stage of its development. As surviving kana correspondence, they are among the oldest known, which makes the reverse of this scroll as important to the history of writing as the front is to the history of court ritual.

What to Look For

The first thing worth holding in mind is the scroll's double nature. One side is the orderly prose of a reference manual; the other is the quick, intimate line of letters never meant for posterity. The same sheet of paper served a senior official's professional notebook and, earlier, somebody's private correspondence.

On the draft side, watch for the marks of composition rather than display: the hand is efficient rather than ornamental, the hand of a man writing for his own use. On the verso, the kana letters show how cursive script ran in continuous strokes, characters linked one into the next, a quality that later became central to Japanese calligraphy.

One practical caution: the scroll is shown only on occasion. The Kyoto National Museum brings it out roughly once every three to five years, often within a themed exhibition rather than the standing galleries. Anyone hoping to see the original should check the museum's exhibition schedule before planning a visit.

Around the Museum

The Kyoto National Museum sits in the Higashiyama district on the eastern side of the city, an area thick with temples and older streets. Directly across the road stands Sanjūsangendō, the long wooden hall famous for its rank upon rank of gilded Kannon figures, an easy pairing for a single afternoon.

The museum is reached in about ten minutes by city bus from Kyoto Station, alighting near the Sanjūsangendō stop; the Keihan Line's Shichijō Station is a short walk away. When the scroll itself is not on view, the museum's Meihin Gallery rotates through other masterpieces of painting, calligraphy, ceramics, and sculpture from its collection, so the visit rewards even when this particular treasure is resting. Kyoto Station, with its onward connections across the region, lies only a few minutes south.