Showcasing a stunning selection of seventy-six paintings and works of calligraphy dating from the ninth through the twentieth century, many for the first time to a Western audience, this volume celebrates the consistent influence of imperial taste on the development of Japanese art. Rare examples of calligraphy from the Heian and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods attest to a longstanding imperial interest in the aesthetically effective union of word and image.

A series of large-scale scrolls by the eighteenth-century painter Ito Jakuchu, presented to the imperial household by the Zen Buddhist temple Shokokuji, represent the most revered Japanese paintings of natural life and the close relationship between the imperial family and the country's religious institutions.

The book also examines the court's role as an art benefactor in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when international influences had a dramatic impact on Japanese notions of the visual arts. Replete with color reproductions, Twelve Centuries of Japanese Art from the Imperial Collections offers scholars, collectors, connoisseurs, historians, and all those interested in Japanese art an unprecedented view of Japanese aesthetic sensibility as expressed in the imperial collections.