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

This small shrine has double doors on the front and back. The rear wall inside the cabinet is fitted on one side with a gilt-bronze plate of a reliquary shaped like a “treasure casket seal” stupa (hōkyōin-tō). The other side has a grooved frame (kendon-shiki) with a wooden panel inserted in it. The front and back of the panel have silk paintings pasted on that depict a seated buddha on one side and the Hall of the Central Dais with Eight Petals (Chūdai-Hachiyō-in) from the Womb World Mandala in Sanskrit seed syllables on the other.

The reliquary shaped like a treasure casket seal stupa is rendered in its full form, including a platform, overhanging eaves, and roof. The stupa’s body is somewhat large for the roof size. Inside the body, a lotus pedestal is rendered in a round hole covered with a crystal plate, allowing for the Buddhist relics to be worshipped from the outside. The overhanging eaves curve slightly and are adorned with small corner decorations. The spire is linked to these with ornamental chains. A foundation platform is rendered below the first platform, suggesting the image is intended to be a jeweled stupa (hōtō), even though it is rendered as a treasure casket seal stupa.

The seated buddha on the other side of the panel is making the meditation mudra and holding a "wheel treasure" (J. rinbō; Sk. cakraratna), indicating its identity is Śākyamuni of the Golden Wheel. This image is paired with the Hall of the Central Dais with Eight Petals (Chūdai-Hachiyōin) from the Womb World mandala in Sanskrit seed syllables on the back, expressing a front-back relationship between Śākyamuni of the Golden Wheel and the buddha Dainichi (Skt. Mahāvairocana) the principal deity of the Womb World. The shrine’s larger composition can further be understood to express a front-back relationship between the relics and the Śākyamuni/Dainichi pairing. In the three Ono lineages of the esoteric Shingon school, primarily the Kajūji lineage, there is a close relationship between the Relic Ritual and Śākyamuni of the Golden Wheel, allowing researchers to determine this shrine belonged to one of the Ono lineages.

All eight fascicles of the Lotus Sutra stored inside the shrine have survived to the present. They are bound in a type of pasted butterfly binding. The eighth fascicle has a colophon indicating the sutra was copied in Karoku 2 (1226) by a person referred to as Kō Amidabutsu.