Early to mid-Edo Period (17th-18th Century)
Donated by Aida Noboru
This is a lacquered box with a golden seal, featuring the Bamboo-and-Sparrow crest and the 5-7 Paulownia crest of the Uesugi Family, rulers of Yonezawa Domain, written in gold.
This type of lacquered box was a piece of utility baggage used for the storing of clothing and other goods during the movement necessitated by the Sankin-kōtai system, whereby samurai lords were made to take alternative residence during the Edo Period. The right and left sides of the lid feature the family crest laid out in gold. It was one of the various tools whose usage was specially granted by the Tokugawa Shōgunate.
It includes a red leather cover to place over the lid, believed to correspond to a lacquered box with the seal used by the Uesugi family during the Edo Period known as the “Chestnut-colored wickerwork red leather golden seal”.