The Remaining Volume of the Ninth Volume of the Manyoshu

A Scroll of Blue Paper, Written in Four Days

Unrolled to its full length, this scroll runs more than eleven meters. The paper carries a faint wash of indigo, its surface dusted with flecks of silver that catch the light as the scroll opens. Across it runs the text of the ninth book of the Man'yōshū, Japan's oldest surviving anthology of poetry, copied out by a single hand in the late eleventh century. A short note at the very end records the dates: the scribe began on the seventeenth day of the ninth month and finished on the twentieth. Close to thirty sheets of paper, written in four days.

The work is known as the Aigami-bon, the "indigo-paper book," and it is held today by the Kyoto National Museum. Its blue is no longer strong. Centuries have softened it to a pale wash that reads almost as water-grey or faded beige, but the name has stuck, and the silver still glints where it was scattered.

What the Man'yōshū Is

The Man'yōshū, or "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves," was compiled in the Nara period of the eighth century and gathers more than 4,500 poems across twenty books. The court official and poet Ōtomo no Yakamochi is thought to have had a hand in assembling it. What sets the anthology apart from the courtly collections that followed is its range of voices. Alongside emperors and aristocrats, it preserves the verse of farmers and of the sakimori, the frontier guardsmen posted to Japan's distant coasts.

The poems were recorded long before Japan had a settled phonetic script. Scribes borrowed Chinese characters for their sounds, a system now called man'yōgana after this very anthology. Reading it has occupied scholars for a thousand years, and the early manuscripts that survive are valued as much for the light they throw on the text as for their beauty as objects.

This scroll preserves roughly four-fifths of Book Nine: around 110 poems, together with an index to the poems that would have filled the missing portions. Five sections have dropped away over the centuries, which is why the piece is formally called a zankan, a "remnant scroll."

Why It Is a National Treasure

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on 22 November 1952. Its standing rests on a simple fact of survival. Among the small group of early Man'yōshū manuscripts, this one is counted among the so-called Five Great Man'yōshū, alongside the Katsura-bon, the Kanazawa-bon, the Genryaku-kōhon, and the Tenji-bon. Of the indigo-paper copies once made, fragments of Book Ten and Book Eighteen are also known, but they survive only as cut pieces. This Book Nine is the only Aigami-bon that remains in its original form as a continuous scroll.

The paper itself is unusual. Rather than dyeing finished sheets, the maker mixed indigo-stained fibers into the pulp as the paper was formed, so the color sits within the sheet rather than on it. Faint ink lines rule the top and bottom edges, and silver leaf, hand-crushed into coarse flakes, was strewn across the surface before the writing began.

The Question of the Hand

For a long time the calligraphy was attributed to Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041), a famous arbiter of taste at the Heian court. That attribution no longer holds. The brushwork here is thick and forceful, the characters large, the strokes driven with a strength rarely seen in the delicate kana of the period. On the evidence of the writing, scholars since the early twentieth century have assigned it instead to Fujiwara no Korefusa (1030–1096).

Korefusa was the third head of the Sesonji house, the family that carried forward the calligraphic tradition of his grandfather Fujiwara no Yukinari, ranked among the Three Brush Traces, the most admired calligraphers of the Heian age. Korefusa served the emperor Shirakawa and was reckoned one of the court's sharper minds, though his later career ended in disgrace over private trade conducted from his post in Kyushu. The attribution is reasoned rather than signed, and it is worth holding it as the strong scholarly consensus it is rather than an absolute certainty. The colophon names no author.

What to Look For

The pleasure of this scroll lies in the tension between its refined materials and its blunt, confident writing. Heian kana is usually a study in restraint, the line kept thin and fluid. Here the brush presses down. Characters sit large on the page, the ink dark, the rhythm quick. Read against the colophon, that speed makes sense: a copyist moving through thirty sheets in four days leaves a different trace than one laboring over a presentation piece.

The silver flecks reward a close look. Scattered coarsely rather than evenly, they break up the surface and give the pale paper its quiet shimmer. Set against the faded blue and the ruled margins, the page was clearly meant to be handsome as well as legible, an object made for a reader who valued the poems and the craft alike.

Visiting and Nearby

The scroll belongs to the Kyoto National Museum, in the Higashiyama district on the city's eastern side. Like most fragile works of calligraphy on paper, it is not on permanent view. It appears only occasionally, usually within a themed special exhibition, so anyone hoping to see the original should check the museum's current schedule before planning a visit. The museum's collection galleries reward a visit in any season, with rotating displays of painting, sculpture, ceramics, and writing.

The surrounding neighborhood is one of Kyoto's richest for sightseeing. Directly across the road stands Sanjūsangen-dō, the long hall famous for its thousand-and-one statues of Kannon. The temple of Chishaku-in, with its celebrated screen paintings, lies a short walk away, and the slopes of Higashiyama leading up toward Kiyomizu-dera are within easy reach on foot or by a brief bus ride.