Sarashina Diary (written by Fujiwara Teika) / with a Booklet

One Volume, National Treasure since 2023

Sarashina Diary (written by Fujiwara Teika) / with a Booklet Box (更級日記, Sarashina Nikki) is a Kamakura-period manuscript at Chiyoda, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, designated a National Treasure on 27 June 2023. The quantity is one volume, the dimensions 16.4 centimetres by 14.5 centimetres, and the owner the state, in the custody of the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

The Agency leaves the field for designation as an Important Cultural Property blank, so the work went to National Treasure without that earlier step, the nineteenth such case among the properties covered here.

The date, 27 June 2023, is the same on which the Sanmyakuinki became an Important Cultural Property. On one day, one work went to National Treasure and the other to the lower rank.

Disordered Leaves Proved This the Ancestor Copy

One passage in the Agency's commentary stands out.

The Sarashina Diary was known as a difficult work, but in modern times it became clear that this was owing to leaves out of order, and since that same disorder had been carried over into every manuscript and printed edition, it also became clear that this book is the sole ancestor of them all.

Leaves out of order means that the sheets were bound in the wrong sequence. The work read badly not because its matter was hard but because its order was wrong.

That same disorder had passed into every manuscript and every printed edition. Which means that all of them descend from this one book.

A defect proved the line of descent. The Choju Jinbutsu Giga also carried omissions and disordered passages, recorded there as damage suffered in transmission. Here the same kind of disorder became evidence of provenance.

Teika Marked His Own Doubts in Red

The copyist's work is recorded too.

This book is a copy of the Sarashina Diary in the hand of Fujiwara no Teika, who lived from 1162 to 1241. The man who made it was Teika himself.

The record continues: Teika marked doubtful passages in red and added notes of collation, recording that he had done so in his colophon.

He did not merely copy. He marked what he doubted, added annotations, and set down in the colophon that he had done it.

The time of copying is inferred from a separate source: from entries in Teika's own diary, the copying is thought to fall after 1230.

The Konjaku Monogatarishu had no colophon of transcription and was dated from format, paper and hand. Here a colophon exists, and another diary narrows the date further.

The Box Is Designated as an Appendage

A box belongs with this manuscript.

The title names a lacquered booklet box decorated with waves and a moon as an appendage. The box that holds the manuscript falls within the listing.

Three ways of handling contents and container have now appeared. The Thirty-Cho Booklet and its lacquered box became separate National Treasures on one day. A printed sutra at Ganjoji and its wooden chest form a single property. Here the relation is body and appendage.

Kept apart, joined as one, or made body and appendage: three treatments of the same pairing stand side by side. The Agency records no criterion for choosing between them.

Provenance is noted as well: records show that the book was among the personal holdings of Emperor Gosai, who reigned from 1654 to 1663.

Consulting It

The manuscript is at Chiyoda, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, owned by the state and held by the Agency. It is not kept on permanent display.

Work on paper is vulnerable to light, so periods on view are limited. At 16.4 by 14.5 centimetres it is a small book.

Three grounds of value are stacked: as the oldest copy transmitting the text, as the sole ancestor of all others, and as a copy and collation by Teika, it is a source of the highest value in the literary history of Japan.

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