Photo/Illutration The sutra scroll found in a private residence, part of which is seen here at the Sumita town office in Iwate Prefecture on April 13, is likely a missing part of the “Konshi Kinji Issaikyo” (Complete corpus of the Buddhist scriptures in gold characters on dark-blue paper), a national treasure. (Masakazu Higashino)

SUMITA, Iwate Prefecture--At a drinking party, a resident of this northeastern town showed a photo of a Buddhist scroll, on a smartphone screen, to a former teacher from his junior high school days.

“There is a sutra like this at our home,” the man told his former teacher.

From there, the Buddhist sutra scroll that has been kept on an altar at a private home here has been found to have a high possibility of being a missing piece of a centuries-old national treasure.

An expert appraisal showed that the sutra is likely a missing part of the “Konshi Kinji Issaikyo” (Complete corpus of the Buddhist scriptures in gold characters on dark-blue paper), a national treasure.

The sutra is one that warlord Fujiwara no Hidehira (1122?-1187) offered to Chusonji temple, in today’s Hiraizumi, Iwate Prefecture, about 850 years ago.

Hidehira is the third-generation warlord of the Oshu-Fujiwara clan.

The item apparently represents Scroll Two of the “Daijo Daishu Jizo Jurinkyo” (Kshitigarbha ten wheels Mahayana sutra from the great collection) and is written in golden characters on navy-blue paper.

The scroll measures 26.6 centimeters in width.

Paper sheets that were originally glued together have come apart and some parts of the scroll are missing, but overall, the document remains in good condition. It measures 9.3 meters long when its separate sheets are laid out side by side.

The scroll was kept in a box of paulownia wood on the Buddhist altar at the home of a man in his 60s in Sumita, Iwate Prefecture, some 50 kilometers from Chusonji temple.

Part of the “Konshi Kinginji Kosho Issaikyo” (Complete corpus of the Buddhist scriptures in alternating gold and silver characters on dark-blue paper), which Fujiwara no Kiyohira (1056-1128) dedicated to Chusonji in 1126, was exhibited to the public in April last year to commemorate the 900th construction anniversary of the temple’s Golden Hall.

Kiyohira is the inaugural warlord of the Oshu-Fujiwara clan.

The Sumita man said he saw media coverage of the exhibition and thought the exhibit strongly resembles what is kept at his home.

The man had an opportunity last autumn to dine in a group with Hideo Chiba, who was his social studies teacher in junior high school. The man showed a photo of the sutra scroll on his smartphone screen to Chiba, 82, on that occasion.

It dawned on Chiba, who serves as a cultural property examiner for the Sumita town authorities, that the item could be a missing scroll from Chusonji’s collection.

Chiba is well-versed in the subject because he has studied the placer gold that is found in areas along the Kesengawa river in Sumita.

With the arrival of 2025, Chiba took the sutra scroll under his charge and asked the Hiraizumi World Heritage Guidance Center to study the item.

Only 2,724 of the initial 5,300 or so scrolls of the Konshi Kinji Issaikyo remain kept at Chusonji.

Naoto Hashiba, a curator with the Hiraizumi World Heritage Guidance Center who scrutinized the sutra scroll, decided that it likely represents part of the Konshi Kinji Issaikyo, partly because it resembles the existing scrolls of the Issaikyo in paper quality and format.

Hashiba now works for the Iwate Prefectural Archaeological Center.

Chiba theorized as to how the scroll had ended up at the private residence.

“I guess the scroll is part of a set that Chusonji transferred, in the past, to an influential major donor,” Chiba said.

A note written in ink with a brush on the box of paulownia wood said the scroll “came from Inagosawa.”

The Inagosawa district of today’s Ofunato, a city adjacent to Sumita, was once the seat of a wealthy merchant family that had amassed a big fortune.

“The sutra scroll could have been bought by the merchant family and subsequently sold to the owner of the private home in Sumita,” Chiba said.

The sutra scroll was put on special public display at the Sumita town office on April 13. Many town residents came to see the exhibit.

Some of the visitors said they hope the scroll will be preserved as a Sumita treasure, officials said.

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