The strips enclosed in these boxes were cut from longer scroll sutras. I purchased them from an antique shop in the Teramachi area of Kyoto during my Fulbright researching Japanese papermaking between 1975-1977. The dates penciled in on most of them were translated from the tipped on strips accompanying each sutra strip by my colleague Robert Singer. It is unclear if the dates refer to the date the sutra was calligraphed or printed, or the date of the original sutra for which the current example is a more recent copy. The condition and formation quality of the papers suggest the dates may be the actual dates the physical sutra specimen in the collection was produced. The strips were remounted on acid free museum board and housed in Asian style box enclosures by Larry Yerkes about 2005. -Tim Barrett, September 2024