The Documents of the Shōsōin Treasury and the History of Their Study

Abstract

One of the most important features of the documents from the Shōsōin treasury is the opportunity for researchers not only to study the events, institutions, and sources of the Nara era, but also to see the Japanese 8th century “with a human face.” Among the documents, there is a lot of material that talks about the everyday life and service of the sovereign’s subjects. This is of special interest for the author of the article, who aims to see a person who lived in ancient Japan. To create a basis for future research, the author conducts a source study of the Shōsōin documents as a preparatory stage for their study. The objectives of the article are to discuss where and why the Shōsōin documents were created; find out how they got into the treasury and how they were stored in it; give their classification, describe the types of documents; find out what happened to them after the conservation of the Shōsōin at the end of the 8th century, how the documents were rediscovered in the Edo period, how and why they were studied in the 19th and 20th centuries; talk about the scholars who were involved in their research, and about the modern study of the Shōsōin documents.

Keywords

• japanese history
• nara period
• buddhism
• shōsōin documents
• classification
• features