Kamakura

Just 24.2 cm tall, this National Treasure at Tokyo's Nezu Museum is a peak of Southern Song bird-and-flower painting, attributed to Li Anzhong and shown only rarely.

Ninety-three Kasuga miracle tales on twenty silk scrolls, painted around 1309 by Takashina Takakane. Complete and never repainted, a National Treasure since 2021.

Painted by the Song court artist Li Di and dated 1197, this National Treasure pairs a white and a red cotton rose, one flower as it shifts colour across a day.

A National Treasure at Tokyo Nezu Museum, this rare Kamakura scroll shows Nachi Falls alone as a sacred deity, fusing yamato-e and Chinese ink-and-gold landscape.

A fan-shaped Song-dynasty painting of one apple branch, its blossoms ranging from bud to full bloom. Now a National Treasure at Tokyo's Ebara Hatakeyama Museum.

A National Treasure at the Tokyo National Museum: a Southern Song three-scroll set by Liang Kai of a gaunt Buddha and snowy peaks, held by the Ashikaga shoguns.

A Southern Song scroll attributed to Ma Yuan, this National Treasure shows a lone traveler hurrying under a folded umbrella as wind and rain cross towering peaks.

Housed at the Sonkeikaku Bunko in Komaba, Tokyo, the National Treasure Sanchō Shinkan brings together autograph letters by three emperors — Fushimi, Hanazono, and Go-Daigo — who lived through the turbulent transition from the late Kamakura period to the Nanboku-chō era. This article introduces one of Japan's most remarkable assemblages of imperial calligraphy and living historical voice.

Discover the Seisetsu Shōchō Bokuseki 'Yo Kantaiji Zōsu Hōgo' at Eisei Bunko in Tokyo. This Important Cultural Property is a Dharma instruction brushed by the Yuan-Chinese Zen master Seisetsu Shōchō (1274–1339), who came to Japan in 1326 and shaped early Japanese Zen. Explore its history, artistic highlights, and visitor information.

Held by the Seikado Foundation in Tokyo, this tachi signed 'Kanenaga' is the finest surviving work of the first-generation Kanenaga, founding master of the Tegai school of Yamato province in the late Kamakura period. Designated a National Treasure in 1952, the sword is prized for its unshortened signed tang and the brilliant crystalline particles of its temper line. It is displayed at the Seikado Bunko Art Museum in Marunouchi, Tokyo.

An Important Cultural Property at the Maeda Ikutokukai: a fragment of the Lotus Sutra's eighth fascicle, dated 1326, brushed by the noble Madenokoji Nobufusa.

A bokuseki scroll at the Tokyo National Museum: a verse brushed by the Southern Song Zen monk Beijian Jujian in a Suzhou pavilion in 1229, an early tea scroll.

Volume 197 of the Hossō Ruirin, a Heian legal encyclopedia once said to fill over 200 volumes. This Kanazawa Bunko copy, made in 1304, is an Important Cultural Property.

Preserved at Waseda University Library in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, this National Treasure is the sole surviving volume of a lost 100-volume Chinese Confucian commentary. A Tang-dynasty handscroll that reached Japan in the Nara period, it bears the personal library seal of Empress Kōmyō. Discover its extraordinary journey, scholarly importance, and how to experience it today.

Housed at Eisei Bunko in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, the National Treasure Raden Shigure-gura is a Kamakura-period black-lacquered saddle whose pine and kudzu motifs, inlaid in iridescent shell, conceal five Japanese characters that spell out a famous love poem by the poet-monk Jien from the Shin Kokin Wakashū anthology.

The Gotoh Museum in Setagaya, Tokyo, preserves the National Treasure 'Six Patriarch Shouldering a Pole,' a thirteenth-century Southern Song ink painting bearing the seal of the painter Chokuō. Rendered in the delicate mōryōga style with washes of pale ink and selective accents of dark ink, the scroll depicts Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, at the life-changing moment he hears the Diamond Sutra. An inscription by Chan master Enkei Kōmon dates the work with unusual precision. Discover the history, artistic value, and visiting information for this masterpiece.

Held by the Nezu Museum in Tokyo's Minami-Aoyama district, Fishing Village at Sunset (attributed to Muqi) is a National Treasure and one of the supreme achievements of Southern Song ink painting. A scene from the famous Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, it bears the seal of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and is exhibited only rarely, every few years.

Explore the Important Cultural Property 'Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki (Kōan Version)' at the Tokyo National Museum — eight surviving painted scenes from a 1278 illustrated handscroll depicting the life, exile, and deification of Sugawara no Michizane, Japan's beloved patron deity of scholarship.