The Second and Fourth Volumes of the Manyoshu (Kanazawa

The Kanazawa Manuscript of the Manyoshu: A Thousand-Year-Old National Treasure by Fujiwara no Sadanobu

Among the surviving literary treasures of Heian-period Japan, few objects weave together poetry, calligraphy, decorative paper craft, and samurai pedigree as completely as the Kanazawa Manuscript of the Manyoshu. This twelfth-century pair of booklets preserves a portion of the oldest surviving anthology of Japanese poetry, written in the fluid, sweeping hand of the celebrated court calligrapher Fujiwara no Sadanobu on shimmering mica-printed paper. For more than three centuries it was a prized heirloom of the Maeda, lords of Kaga, before being presented to the Emperor Meiji in 1910. In 2023 it was formally designated a National Treasure, and today it is held by the state and housed at the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan, at the heart of the Imperial Palace grounds in Tokyo.

Historical Background

The Manyoshu, or Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, is Japan's oldest extant poetry anthology, compiled during the Nara period in the eighth century. In twenty books it gathers more than 4,500 poems spanning some four centuries of Japanese verse, from the legendary Emperor Nintoku down to the year 759. Unusually for a court anthology, it collects voices from across society: emperors and aristocrats, of course, but also farmers and the sakimori frontier guards sent from eastern provinces to defend the distant coasts.

The original manuscript has long been lost. What scholars know of the Manyoshu comes from a small number of ancient handwritten copies made in the centuries that followed, of which only five trace their origins to the Heian period (794-1185). These five are collectively honoured as the Godai Manyoshu, the "Five Great Manyoshu," and together they form the earliest stratum of the poem collection's textual tradition. The Kanazawa manuscript is one of the five.

The two booklets that make up this National Treasure are written in a style of binding called detchōsō, in which folded sheets are pasted at the spine to form a codex. They preserve most of Book Two and a portion of Book Four of the Manyoshu. Volume Two contains fifty-eight leaves and Volume Four contains twenty. Their calligraphy is attributed to Fujiwara no Sadanobu (1088-?), fifth-generation head of the Sesonji school of calligraphy, the family descended from the great Heian master Fujiwara no Yukinari. Scholars date the writing to Sadanobu's vigorous thirties, probably the Gen'ei to Hōan years of roughly 1118 to 1123.

Why It Was Designated a National Treasure

The cultural significance of the Kanazawa Manuscript rests on several reinforcing dimensions. It is one of only five Manyoshu manuscripts surviving from the Heian period, and within the scholarly classification of Manyoshu textual lineages it belongs to the jiten-bon group — manuscripts predating the thirteenth-century editorial revisions made by the monk Senkaku (1203-?). As such, it is an indispensable witness to how the poetry was read, transmitted, and annotated before those revisions reshaped the text.

The calligraphy itself is considered a landmark of Heian brushwork. Fujiwara no Sadanobu belonged to a family of court calligraphers who had effectively set the standards of elegant writing in Japan for generations. His manner — rapid, rhythmic, with strong upward-slanting strokes — became known as the Sadanobu-yō, or "Sadanobu style." In the Kanazawa manuscript, that swift, flowing hand meets a support of extraordinary luxury: a Japanese-made version of Chinese decorated paper called wasei karakami, printed with mica pigment so that floral and arabesque designs shimmer faintly across the surface. The harmony between text and paper is widely cited as among the finest in the history of Japanese calligraphy.

The designation also covers three attached items that document the manuscript's passage through history: a lacquer booklet box decorated with maki-e gold-lacquer scenery known as the Urakei box, a second plain paulownia-wood booklet box, and an inscription on the lid of the paulownia box written by Maeda Tsunanori, fifth lord of Kaga Domain, dated the fifteenth day of the second month of Hōei 4 (1707). That inscription records that the book had belonged to Tsunanori's grandfather Maeda Toshitsune, the third lord of Kaga, allowing the object's provenance to be traced with rare certainty back to the seventeenth century.

Highlights and What to Look For

Visitors encountering the Kanazawa Manuscript in person are often struck first by its intimate scale. Each booklet measures only about 21.7 by 13.6 centimetres — smaller than a modern paperback, yet holding within its covers poetry that has shaped the Japanese literary imagination for more than a millennium.

The decorated paper is the first feature that rewards close looking. Turn the page so that light catches it at an angle and the printed motifs — rosettes, vines, arabesques — emerge as a soft silver glow against the tinted ground. This mica-printed decoration, applied by pressing the paper against carved blocks charged with powdered mica, was an expensive imitation of Tang Chinese luxury paper adapted by Heian Japanese artisans. Very few complete books on such paper survive from the period.

The brushwork itself is the next layer of pleasure. Sadanobu was one of the most prolific copyists of his age — he is said to have undertaken the daunting task of transcribing the entire Buddhist canon in a single hand — and that practice shows in the swiftness and confidence of his line. His characters lean to the upper right, the strokes accelerate and slow with a musicality, and the kana flow together into connected groups that suggest breath and phrasing. Scholars call the result ryūdōkan, the sense of movement and flow.

The poems themselves are worth pausing over. Book Two of the Manyoshu is particularly rich in love poems and elegies from the seventh century, including verses associated with famous figures like Princess Nukata and the poet-official Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. Reading them in this form — copied out by a twelfth-century aristocrat onto a surface designed to be beautiful in its own right — gives a vivid sense of how the earliest Japanese poetry lived on as an object of devoted study and aesthetic pleasure centuries after its composition.

Visitor Information

The Kanazawa Manuscript is held at the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan, located within the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo. The museum houses some 9,800 objects that were transferred to the state from the imperial family, and it presents rotating exhibitions drawn from that collection. Because works on paper are extremely sensitive to light, manuscripts of this stature are displayed only occasionally, often for a few weeks at a time within a themed exhibition.

Please note that the museum is currently in a phase of redevelopment. A first section of the new building opened in late 2023, and the full new facility is scheduled to open in autumn 2026. Visitors planning a trip are strongly advised to check the museum's official website in advance for current opening status, exhibition schedules, and whether the Kanazawa Manuscript is on view.

When the museum is open, hours are typically 9:30 to 17:00, with extended Friday and Saturday evening hours until 20:00; last admission is thirty minutes before closing. The museum closes on Mondays (or the following weekday when Monday is a public holiday), during the New Year period, on the Emperor's Birthday, and during installation changeovers. Admission is 1,000 yen for adults and 500 yen for university students, with free admission for high school students and younger, visitors aged 70 and above, and disability pass holders accompanied by one carer.

Access is easy by public transport. The closest station is Otemachi on the Tokyo Metro, about a five-minute walk from exit C13a. From JR Tokyo Station, the museum is roughly a fifteen-minute walk via the Marunouchi North exit.

Around the Museum

A visit to the Sannomaru Shozokan is easily combined with other highlights of central Tokyo. The Imperial Palace East Gardens themselves are open to the public free of charge and contain the remains of the great keep of Edo Castle, a traditional Japanese garden, and the Ninomaru grove, making them a rewarding walk in any season. The nearby Kitanomaru area is home to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the Crafts Gallery, both excellent complements to the Shozokan's imperial collections.

For those interested in calligraphy and classical literature, the Idemitsu Museum of Arts in Marunouchi holds notable collections of Japanese painting and ceramics and regularly shows works related to the courtly aesthetic of the Kanazawa Manuscript's period. A slightly longer journey takes you to the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno, which holds another of the Five Great Manyoshu — the Genryaku kōhon — and offers an unparalleled overview of Japanese art history.