Imperial Regalia of Japan

The Imperial Regalia of Japan, the Three Sacred Treasures, or Sanshu no Jingi, are a mirror, a sword and a curved jewel that together stand for the legitimacy of the Japanese emperor. The mirror is the Yata no Kagami, the sword the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, and the jewel the Yasakani no Magatama, and they are traditionally read as emblems of wisdom, valour and benevolence.

By the founding myth they were given by the sun goddess Amaterasu to her descendants and handed down through the imperial line, so that to possess them is to hold the mandate of the throne. They are unique among the great sacred objects of the world for their absolute concealment: they are never exhibited, never photographed, and are handled only wrapped and encased, even during the enthronement rites at which they are formally conveyed. Because no outside observer examines them, everything about their material form, their age and their continuity is a matter of tradition rather than record. Out of respect for that tradition, which restricts the very seeing of these objects, this entry describes them only as the tradition and the scholarship allow, and does not attempt to reconstruct their appearance.

The treasures are first described in the Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720), Japan's oldest chronicles. In the myth of the heavenly cave, the other gods forge the mirror Yata no Kagami and string the jewels Yasakani no Magatama to draw the hidden sun goddess Amaterasu back into the world; the sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi is found by the storm god Susanoo in the tail of the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi and presented to his sister. Amaterasu grants the three to her grandson Ninigi as he descends to rule the land, and they pass to Jimmu, the legendary first emperor, as the insignia of sovereignty.

Over time the objects came to rest in different places. The mirror is enshrined at the Ise Grand Shrine, the chief shrine of Amaterasu; the sword is kept at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya; and a jewel, with replica mirror and sword, is held in the sanctuary of the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The historical record is tangled by loss: several medieval accounts say the original Kusanagi went down with the child emperor Antoku at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, and that a replacement was made, while other accounts say the object lost was already a copy. Replicas of the sword and mirror are documented from the 9th century. At each modern accession, 1989, 1990 and 2019, the regalia have featured in the rites while remaining wholly hidden from view.

The tradition holds that the treasures are the very objects handed down from the age of the gods, unbroken tokens of an imperial line said to be equally unbroken. The imperial house and the custodian shrines affirm their existence and their presence at Ise, Atsuta and the palace, and the accession rites treat them as continuous with the mythic originals.

Scholars can say little with confidence precisely because the objects are never seen. No emperor in modern times is known to have viewed the mirror or the sword unwrapped; there are no photographs, measurements or material analyses, so questions of age, composition and identity are unanswerable from evidence. The historical texts themselves record replacement and loss: the accounts of the sword's disappearance at Dan-no-ura in 1185, the making of replicas, and the documented 9th-century copies all indicate that whatever is kept today may not be a single object of great antiquity. Most historians therefore treat the regalia as genuinely existing, ritually central objects whose specific physical history is indeterminate, and regard the concealment as deliberate, the mystery adding to their authority. The honest status is that they are believed to exist and are actively used, while their authenticity as the primordial treasures is unverifiable and, in the case of the sword, complicated by the medieval loss narratives.

In the imperial tradition the treasures are not worshipped as gods but revered as the sacred insignia of the throne and, in the case of the Ise mirror, as the shintai, the object in which the presence of Amaterasu abides. Their transmission is the heart of the accession: a new emperor's legitimacy is expressed by the conveyance of the sword and jewel (and, at Ise and Atsuta, the abiding of mirror and sword) rather than by any crowning. The rite is conducted with the objects sealed from sight, and their handling is limited to a small number of priests and officials.

Their concealment is itself a religious value. The tradition holds that the treasures are too sacred to be exposed, and the restriction on seeing or depicting them is respected here: the entry records what the chronicles and custodians attest and the questions scholars raise, without reconstructing the hidden objects. For Shinto and for the imperial institution they remain the supreme material symbols of continuity and rule.