Kanazawa Bunko

Hōjō Sanetoki

Seal of the Bunko

The Kanazawa Bunko ( Japanese 金沢文庫 ) in Yokohama , Kanagawa Prefecture preserves the cultural heritage of the Hōjō and makes it accessible to the public. The carrier is Kanagawa Prefecture.

history

The beginning

In Kamakura , soon after Minamoto Yoritomo's death, the actual power passed from the Minamoto to their caretaker, the Hōjō . We owe to them the most important library in ancient Japan. A grandson of the second caretaker Hōjō Yoshitoki , Sanetoki ( 北条実時 ; 1224-1276), who held various posts in the Kamakura government , is said to have been enthusiastic about science in his early youth. He collected Japanese and Chinese books and, towards the end of his life, brought them to his country house in Kanazawa , a place near the then seat of government in Kamakuras, but on Tokyo Bay .

The library, the Kanazawa Bunko , was maintained by Sanetoki's son Akitoki ( 北条頭時 ; 1248–1301), the grandson Sadaaki ( 北条貞頭 : 1278–1333) and by his great grandson Sadamasa (1302–1333). The inventory is said to have exceeded twenty thousand volumes and had its own building. The library comprised Japanese and Chinese writings of Buddhist and Confucian content as well as historical, philosophical, medical, literary works and finally also works on calendar studies . The role of the Bunko as a publicly accessible library in the cultural life of the entire region and beyond is evidenced by visitors from all parts of the country.

The further development

After the fall of the Kamakura government (1333) and the associated extinction of the Hōjō, their house temple, the Shōmyō-ji ( 称名寺 ), continued to take care of the holdings that he had also previously managed. But since the temple had also lost its greatest sponsors with the sinking of the Hōjō, it could not keep the library building in the long run and transferred the holdings to its own premises. The collection was spared damage from political and military unrest or fires in the following years, but large parts of it were gradually removed, for example after 1600 by Tokugawa Ieyasu , the new ruler in the country, and later by Maeda Tsunanori (1643-1724) , the head of the wealthy principality of Kaga, who filled his library, the Sonkeikaku Bunko . After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, many works from Tokugawa were transferred to the archives of the Imperial Court Office and the cabinet library. The latter are now kept in the National Archives. The Sonkeikaku Bunko of the Maeda outlasted the times - it is run today in Tōkyō (Komaba) in the form of a foundation. In any case, the stocks removed at that time are easily identifiable by the stamp ( zōshoin ) Kanazawa Bunko .

reconstruction

The good reputation of the former library remained alive even after its decline, and so there were first plans for reconstruction as early as the 1920s, including a. suggested by Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi . After 1868, the government took up the plans and erected a building, which, however , suffered damage in the Kanto earthquake in 1923. In 1930, with the support of the Emperor, a representative new library building in the Japanese-European style was opened for the collection. The site of the Shōmyō-ji temple, which had continued to exist in modest form, was chosen as the site. The rebuilt bunko was initially placed under the prefecture library of Kanagawa prefecture, since 1955 it has been run as the prefecture's museum, in which art objects from the Kamakura period are also shown. In 1990 he was given a new building in which the library and museum functions are combined.

Its first director of modern times, Seki Yasushi ( 関靖 ; 1877–1958), has made a contribution to the history of Kanazawa Bunko . He summarized the results of his years of research in the work Kanazawa bunko no kenkyū ( 金沢文庫の研究 ), which he published in 1951. How far the library was actually available to the public and what function the Kanazawa University of Applied Sciences mentioned in the documents had in addition to the training of priests is not fully clear due to the scant information.

The bunko today

The bunko is structured as follows:

On the ground floor (1,256 m²) the entrance hall leads to an overview room and a high temple-like room on the right-hand side and to two further exhibition rooms on the left-hand side. The temple-like room contains Buddhist sculptures and paintings.
On the first floor (760 m²) there is a large exhibition room and the library with 40,000 volumes including a reading room.
In the basement (753 m²) there is a hall and study room.

From the inventory

National treasures : 1 picture collection of 5 portraits of the Hōjō, 1 writing collection (19 documents).
Important cultural assets : 3 picture collections with 29 pictures, sculpture groups with 22 sculptures, 7 handicrafts, 8 writing collections (16 documents), old books (4,149 volumes).
There are also pictures and sculptures that are classified as an important cultural asset of the prefecture.

Remarks

↑ Kanazawa, today a district of Yokohama , was directly accessible from the sea in the Middle Ages and was an important port, especially for traffic with China.

literature

Kanazawa Bunko (Ed.): Kanazawa Bunko. Sogo Annai. 1994, 80 p. (Japanese with English summary)
Ono, Noriaki: Nihon toshokan-shi. Gembunsha, Tokyo 1973.

Web links

Kanazawa Bunko website (Japanese)

35.343855 139.628679Coordinates: 35 ° 20 ′ 37.9 ″ N , 139 ° 37 ′ 43.2 ″ E

[1] Kanazawa, today a district of Yokohama , was directly accessible from the sea in the Middle Ages and was an important port, especially for traffic with China.