This lavishly decorated scroll contains Chapter 8 of the Lotus Sūtra (‘The Prophecy of Enlightenment for Five Hundred Disciples’). The upper section of the frontispiece shows the Buddha granting promises of Buddhahood to his disciples; below are scenes from the parable of a man who leads a life of poverty and hardship, unaware that many years before a friend had sewn a priceless jewel into his robe, an allusion to the teachings of the Buddha.
The manuscript was created in 1636 and is thought to be part of a set twenty-eight scrolls presented by Emperor Go-Mizunoo (1596–1680) to the Tōshōgū Shrine in Nikkō, the mausoleum of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616).