The Gold and Silver Sutra (Chusonji Sutra)

The Kingin-ji Issaikyō: A Gold-and-Silver Buddhist Canon

Unroll one of these scrolls and the script catches the light in two metals at once. On paper dyed a deep indigo, the columns of scripture alternate down the whole length: one line in gold, the next in silver, then gold again. Kongōbu-ji on Mount Kōya holds 4,296 of these scrolls, the surviving bulk of a complete Buddhist canon copied in the far north of Japan nine centuries ago. Together they make up the national treasure recorded as the Kingin-ji Issaikyō, and known more widely as the Chūsonji sutras.

An issaikyō is a full Buddhist canon, the entire body of scripture running to roughly 5,400 scrolls. Copying one by hand was an enormous labour. Copying one in gold and silver, line by alternating line, was something almost no one else attempted, in Japan or anywhere in East Asia.

Commissioned by the Lords of Hiraizumi

The canon was the project of Fujiwara no Kiyohira (1056–1128), founder of the Northern Fujiwara line that ruled the northern reaches of Honshū from their seat at Hiraizumi. Their wealth rested on the gold mined across the Ōshū region, and that gold paid for the ink. A colophon on the second scroll of the Kegon-kyō (the Flower Garland Sutra) carries a date in the second month of 1117, which shows that copying was already under way well before Kiyohira's temple, Chūson-ji, was formally dedicated. A later document records that the work took about eight years to finish.

Kiyohira's dedication text of 1126 mentions the offering of "one set of the canon in gold and silver pigment." The scrolls now on Mount Kōya answer to that phrase. Because Kiyohira set the work in motion, they are sometimes called the Kiyohira sutras after him.

How a canon copied for a Tendai temple in the north came to rest at a Shingon monastery far to the south is not fully settled. Several explanations have been offered: a gradual dispersal as Chūson-ji fell into decline between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, a donation by the warlord Toyotomi Hidetsugu, or an offering connected with Date Masamune. The outcome, at least, is clear. Chūson-ji itself now keeps only about fifteen scrolls of this set, while the great majority reached Mount Kōya. Smaller groups survive elsewhere, including 166 scrolls at Kanshin-ji in Osaka and a dozen at the Tokyo National Museum.

Why It Is a National Treasure

The set was designated a national treasure on 9 June 1951. Its value lies partly in scale and partly in rarity. Indigo paper written in gold was common enough in late Heian Japan, but combining gold and silver in alternating lines, and carrying that combination across a work as vast as a complete canon, has almost no parallel anywhere. The Chūsonji sutras stand beside the Golden Hall of Chūson-ji as the clearest surviving expression of the culture the Northern Fujiwara built at Hiraizumi.

The designation also lists 315 lacquered boxes that once stored the scrolls, recorded as an ancillary part of the same treasure.

What to Look For

The alternating gold and silver

Silver ruled lines divide the columns, and within them the characters switch metal from line to line. The effect is deliberate and difficult to achieve at this length without the scheme breaking down. Reading across a single panel, the eye moves from a gold line to a silver one and back, a rhythm sustained scroll after scroll.

The frontispiece paintings

Each scroll opens with a mikae-e, a small painting in gold and silver pigment set before the text. Most show the Buddha Shakyamuni preaching, often facing forward against a hall or pavilion. Others depict pagodas, landscapes, plants, animals, and figures drawn from the meaning of the sutra that follows, so the imagery is more varied than a single template.

The shine itself

After the metal characters were written, their surface was burnished, by tradition with a tool resembling a boar's tusk, so the gold and silver would gleam rather than sit flat. Viewed at an angle, the polishing strokes are still visible on the page.

The covers and the paper

The outer covers carry a scrolling floral pattern, the hōsōge arabesque, drawn in gold and silver. The paper itself holds a quieter surprise: examination has found that some sheets were made by dyeing discarded documents indigo before reuse, and that the stock was sourced from around the capital region rather than the north where the scrolls were written.

Seeing the Scrolls at Mount Kōya

The scrolls belong to Kongōbu-ji and are cared for on Mount Kōya, where they are shown at the Reihōkan, the mountain's treasure museum. The Reihōkan opened in 1921, and its wooden main hall is itself a registered cultural property. Because paper and pigment are sensitive to light, the canon is never on permanent view. A few scrolls appear in rotating displays, so it is worth checking the museum's current exhibition list before planning a visit around them. Photography is not permitted inside the galleries.

Mount Kōya, founded by the monk Kūkai in the early ninth century as the centre of Shingon Buddhism, forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage site "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range." Reaching it is part of the experience: the usual approach is the Nankai Kōya Line to Gokurakubashi, a cable car up the mountainside, then a short bus ride into the temple town. The Reihōkan sits beside the Danjō Garan complex, near the Reihōkan-mae bus stop.

Around Mount Kōya

The mountain rewards an unhurried stay. The Danjō Garan, the original ritual heart of the complex, is crowned by the vermilion Konpon Daitō pagoda. A short walk away stands Kongōbu-ji, the head temple of the Shingon school, with its rock garden and painted sliding screens. At the eastern end of the town lies Okunoin, the mausoleum of Kūkai, approached on a two-kilometre path lined with more than 200,000 memorials beneath ancient cedars. Many visitors stay overnight in a shukubō, one of the temple lodgings that serve vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and open their morning rituals to guests.