National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

There is an inscription on the underside of the handle saying that Shôtoku-taishi used it at the time of lecturing about the excellence of the Lotus Sutra (Hokekyô) at Okamoto Palace, which can be found in the "Gohômotsu-zue" (Illustration of Imperial Treasures). The censer is composed of a burner, a central stem under the burner and a chrysanthemum-shaped pedestal. On the root of the handle, a heart-shaped metal ornament is fixed. All the parts were cast from bronze and assembled by tacking. This censer is called the Censer with Handle with Lion-Shaped Weight (Shishichin-egouro), because a lion-shaped weight (Chinsu) is fixed on the end of the handle bent into an L shape. This kind of long-handled censer is from the Chinese Tang period and it is thought that it was very popular in the Nara period (710-794) in Japan.