National Treasures of Yamaguchi

A late Kamakura-period hall in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Its own pillars went up in 1320, a good seven years before the temple that now holds it was founded.

The pagoda at Rurikoji in Yamaguchi dates from about 1442. Slender above the third tier, it holds a circular altar platform found in no other pagoda in Japan.

A Kamakura-period waist sword in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Its name comes from the chrysanthemums carved upon the hilt of it, and not upon the blade itself.

A handscroll by Sesshu in Yamaguchi Prefecture. A scroll held in Kyoto calls this one the long landscape scroll and calls itself the shorter of the two.

Discover the National Treasure main hall of Sumiyoshi Shrine in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi. Built in 1370, this rare nine-bay nagare-zukuri structure is one of Japan's Three Great Sumiyoshi shrines and a masterpiece of Muromachi-period sacred architecture.

The Inaba Go, a National Treasure held by the Kashiwabara Art Museum in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi, is a Nanbokuchō-period blade by the master Gō Yoshihiro. It passed from the Inaba family to Tokugawa Ieyasu, then to Yūki Hideyasu and the Tsuyama Matsudaira clan, and was designated a National Treasure in 1951. Only eleven authenticated Gō Yoshihiro swords exist, making this gold-inlaid blade one of Japan's most celebrated meibutsu swords.

The eighth volume of the Koyagire, the oldest surviving copy of Japan's first imperial poetry anthology and one of only three left whole, at the Mori Museum in Hofu.

Held at the Mōri Museum in Hōfu, this single handscroll is Japan's oldest dated copy of Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, brushed and annotated in 1073.

Housed at the Kikkawa Museum in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi, this National Treasure tachi was forged in the early Kamakura period by Tamenji of the Ko-Aoe school. Carried by Kikkou Kojiro Tomokane, ancestor of the Kikkawa clan, at the 1200 Battle of Kitsunegasaki against the Kajiwara clan — an event recorded in the Azuma Kagami — the blade survives in remarkably pristine condition together with its original black-lacquered leather-wrapped mounting.

A National Treasure at Amidaji in Hofu, this 1197 cast-iron pagoda was made for Chogen's rebuilding of Todaiji and enshrines a crystal stupa holding a Buddha relic.