A Thousand-Volume Anthology, Reduced to a Handful of Scrolls
When the Tang court completed the Wenguan Cilin in the year 658, it ran to a thousand scrolls. Today fewer than three dozen survive anywhere on earth, and nearly all of them are in Japan. One of those survivors is a single scroll held at Hōju-in, a temple on Mount Kōya in Wakayama Prefecture. It carries the formal designation Bunkan Shirin Zankan, literally "remnant scroll of the Wenguan Cilin," and it was registered as a National Treasure of Japan in 1953.
The compilation was an imperial commission. In 658, under the third Tang emperor, Gaozong, the official Xu Jingzong oversaw the gathering of poetry and prose stretching from the Han dynasty down to the early Tang, sorted by literary form across those thousand scrolls. As an anthology of Chinese letters it is second in age only to the Wen Xuan, the "Selections of Refined Literature" that East Asian scholars studied for centuries.
What makes the Hōju-in scroll remarkable is not its length, which is modest, but the fact that it exists at all.
A Book That Died at Home and Lived Abroad
In China the Wenguan Cilin did not last. References to it thin out after the Tang, and by the Song period it had effectively vanished from circulation in its own country. The bibliographic record tells the story plainly: a Northern Song catalogue lists only a four-scroll portion, and the official history of the Song notes a mere single scroll of its poetry. The bulk of the work was gone.
It survived instead in Japan, where copies had arrived early and been recopied by hand. Texts like this, lost in their country of origin yet preserved overseas, have a name in Japanese scholarship: itsuzonsho, "books that escaped extinction." The Wenguan Cilin is among the most celebrated examples.
The recovery worked in both directions. In the Edo period the scholar Hayashi Jussai included several remnant scrolls in his collection of such rescued texts, and through that publication knowledge of the anthology flowed back into China. Later the Qing scholar Yang Shoujing, working in Japan, tracked down further fragments and printed them in his own collectanea. A book that had died in its homeland was, in effect, reintroduced there from the islands that had kept it alive.
Why It Was Made a National Treasure
The surviving Japanese manuscripts were brushed in the early Heian period. The core of the National Treasure group are copies made in the Kōnin era, traditionally dated to 823, and Mount Kōya holds the largest share of them. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the Hōju-in scroll's period as spanning the Tang and Heian eras, a way of marking that a Tang Chinese text reaches us through a Japanese hand of the ninth century.
That combination is the heart of its value. The scroll is at once a witness to early Tang literary culture, much of which is otherwise lost, and a specimen of Heian-period transcription of Chinese classics. For scholars it preserves poems and prose pieces that exist in no other source. For students of calligraphy it shows how Chinese writing was received and reproduced in early Japan.
The National Treasure designation, granted on November 14, 1953, covers two separate Mount Kōya holdings of the same work: the single scroll at Hōju-in and a twelve-scroll set at the neighbouring temple of Shōchi-in. A further scroll is kept by the Imperial Household Agency, and other portions are scattered among institutions including Tenri Library. Modern scholars assembled these dispersed pieces in a twentieth-century facsimile edition that attempts to restore the original sequence of the Kōnin manuscript.
What There Is to See, and Where
This is a work of paper and ink, not architecture, and Hōju-in does not put it on view. When the scroll is shown at all, it appears at the Reihōkan, the treasure museum that conserves and exhibits cultural properties from the temples across Mount Kōya. Even there the appearances are infrequent; the scroll has surfaced in occasional special exhibitions, sometimes only for part of a show's run, with years passing between viewings.
The Reihōkan Treasure Museum
The Reihōkan is the place to plan around. Opened in 1921, it gathers the National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties owned by Mount Kōya's many sub-temples, rotating them through changing displays. Even when the Wenguan Cilin scroll is not out, the galleries hold celebrated paintings, sculpture, and manuscripts that reward a visit on their own. Checking the museum's current exhibition schedule before travelling is the only reliable way to know whether the scroll will be on the wall.
Hōju-in itself
The owning temple has its own interest. Hōju-in was built to echo the form of Kongōbu-ji, the head temple of the Kōyasan Shingon school, and by long-standing arrangement it would serve as the sect's administrative seat should Kongōbu-ji ever be put out of use. It also houses the Senshū Gakuin, the training college where Shingon priests are formed. The temple traces its origins to an earlier foundation known as Muryōju-in, established in the early eleventh century.
Around Mount Kōya
Mount Kōya is one of Japan's great monastic landscapes, founded by Kūkai in the early ninth century as the centre of Shingon Buddhism and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. A visit organised around the Reihōkan falls naturally into the wider mountain.
The Okunoin, the forested cemetery leading to Kūkai's mausoleum, runs for roughly two kilometres beneath towering cedars and past more than two hundred thousand memorials. The Danjō Garan, the original temple complex, centres on the vermilion Konpon Daitō pagoda. Kongōbu-ji, the administrative head temple that Hōju-in mirrors, is a short walk away and contains one of the largest rock gardens in the country. Many visitors stay overnight in a shukubō, a temple lodging, to join the early morning rituals and eat the vegetarian shōjin ryōri prepared by the monks.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Wakayama
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Bunkan Kaori Hayashi Zanmaki
- [ Koyasan & Kumano Kodo World Heritage Trails ]
Q&A
- Can I actually see the scroll if I visit Mount Kōya?
- Not on demand. Hōju-in does not display it, and it appears only in occasional special exhibitions at the Reihōkan treasure museum, with long gaps between showings. Check the Reihōkan's exhibition calendar before you travel rather than expecting to find it on view.
- How does this scroll differ from the other Wenguan Cilin at Mount Kōya?
- They are remnants of the same lost anthology held by different temples. Hōju-in owns a single scroll; the neighbouring Shōchi-in owns a set of twelve. Both are National Treasures and were designated together in 1953.
- Why does a Chinese book survive only in Japan?
- Copies reached Japan early and were transcribed by hand, while the original effectively disappeared in China by the Song dynasty. Texts preserved this way, lost at home but kept abroad, are known in Japanese as itsuzonsho.
- What is written in it?
- Classical Chinese poetry and prose from the Han through the early Tang, arranged by literary form. The full work organised a thousand scrolls of such writing; this remnant carries a small portion of that, including pieces that survive nowhere else.
- How do I reach the Reihōkan?
- From Osaka, take the Nankai line to Gokurakubashi, then the cable car up to Mount Kōya, and a local bus into the temple town. The Reihōkan sits centrally, near the Danjō Garan, and is easy to combine with the other main sights in a single day.
Basic Information
| Name | Bunkan Shirin Zankan (remnant scroll of the Wenguan Cilin) |
|---|---|
| Location | 306 Kōyasan, Kōya-chō, Ito-gun, Wakayama Prefecture |
| Owner | Hōju-in |
| Conserved at | Kōyasan Reihōkan (treasure museum) |
| Designation | National Treasure (Calligraphy and Classical Texts) |
| Designated | November 14, 1953 |
| Quantity | One scroll |
| Period | Tang to Heian (text Tang Chinese; surviving manuscript early Heian) |
| Public access | Not on permanent display; shown occasionally at the Reihōkan |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/201/704
- Cultural Heritage Online (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/db/heritages/detail/148788
- Kōyasan Reihōkan (treasure museum)
- https://reihokan.or.jp/
- Wikipedia: Bunkan Shirin
- https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/文館詞林
- WANDER Kokuho: Bunkan Shirin Zankan (Hōju-in)
- https://wanderkokuho.com/201-00704/
Last verified: 2026.05.29