NAGOYA--Two lavish 17th-century scrolls produced to commemorate the third Tokugawa shogun have been found in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, after being missing for more than 100 years.

The Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya, the home turf of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s founder Tokugawa Ieyasu, announced the discovery on May 17.

The scrolls, from a series of 33 rolls of the Lotus Sutra, are written with gold paint on dark navy blue paper, and feature gold-painted Buddha and disciples depicting scenes in the sutra.

The scrolls’ rods are made of crystals and have gold metalwork-capped tips emblazoned with “aoi” hollyhock leaf designs of the Tokugawa family crest.

The two scrolls found are chapters of “Kejoyuhon” (the parable of the magic city), calligraphed by the monk Shunkai, and “Hosshikudokuhon” (merits and virtues obtained by a teacher of the Dharma), by court noble Sono Motoyoshi.

The full set of 33 scrolls were originally made during the time of the reign of the fourth Tokugawa shogun, Ietsuna (1641-1680), for the 17th anniversary of the death of his father and the third shogun, Iemitsu (1604-1651).

They were offered to the spirit of Iemitsu at a temple where he is buried in the Nikko district, Tochigi Prefecture, but were lost in the chaos of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Several volumes of the other 31 scrolls are currently in the collection of a museum of history and literature at Osaka Aoyama University in Kawanishi, Hyogo Prefecture, but the whereabouts of the rest are unknown.

The discovery was made after a woman living in Aichi Prefecture contacted the Nagoya museum, saying she owns “scrolls that have aoi crests drawn on them.”

After an investigation, one of the scrolls was confirmed to contain Motoyoshi’s handwriting, and both were identified as being part of the missing Lotus Sutra. The woman has entrusted the scrolls to the museum.

“They are well-preserved, and retain their original condition,” said Fumihiko Hara, acting head of the museum’s curation department. “They are also valuable as cultural properties, as they were made to be luxurious to show off the Tokugawa Shogunate’s power and wealth.”