Leonardo Anticipated Japan: A Surprising Discovery by Tuscan Scholars

A single sentence, tucked away among the dense pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Madrid II, may rewrite the history of wood technology. Three Italian scholars — Annalisa Di Maria, Andrea da Montefeltro and Lucica Bianchi, members of the Florence UNESCO Club — have uncovered a note by the Tuscan genius that predates by more than two centuries the Japanese technique of Shou Sugi Ban (also called Yakisugi): a method of surface charring used to make wood last longer and stand up to the elements.

A sentence that changes history

On folio 87r of the Codex Madrid II, Leonardo writes:

“They will be better preserved if stripped of their bark and burned on the surface than by any other means.”

A simple note, yet a powerful one. It describes a process we know today as surface charring — the very foundation of Shou Sugi Ban, a practice documented in Japan only from the eighteenth century onward. Leonardo, at the height of the Renaissance, had already worked it out.

A rediscovery made in Tuscany

The discovery is the fruit of years of cross-disciplinary study, drawing together philology, art history and materials science. The three researchers chose to dig into the Codex Madrid II because it marks a pivotal moment in Leonardo’s systemic thinking. Di Maria in particular — one of the world’s foremost experts on the Vincian genius — has led an approach that reads the manuscripts not as isolated documents but as interconnected parts of the master’s “mental laboratory.”

“To understand Leonardo,” the researchers explain, “you need a method that can flow like a river — fluid and circular, where art and science are in constant dialogue.”

Leonardo and wood: a total vision

In the codex, Leonardo examines wood in all its facets:

• Choosing the species: chestnut, beech, oak, linden, alder, maple, ash.
• Natural seasoning: leaving the trunk over its roots to drain the sap.
• Structural and musical uses: from building to acoustic instruments.
• And finally, surface burning as a preservation treatment.

It is a systemic vision that unites empirical knowledge, artistic intuition and scientific rigor.

Shou Sugi Ban: an impossible convergence?

Shou Sugi Ban — back in fashion today thanks to sustainable building — makes wood:

• Waterproof, by sealing the pores;
• Fire-resistant, thanks to the charred layer that slows combustion;
• Protected from insects and mold, by removing sugars and nutrients.

Leonardo grasped all of this in the sixteenth century. And yet there was no direct contact with Japan at the time. The Florentine genius could not have known this Eastern technique: this is a case of convergent invention. Two distant cultures, two different eras, the same solution.

“An extraordinary coincidence,” the researchers note, “one that shows how Leonardo’s mind was already reaching toward a global understanding of knowledge.”

An indirect transmission?

A tantalizing hypothesis emerges from the study: what if the knowledge held in Leonardo’s codices had traveled far beyond Europe? The earliest Portuguese and Spanish voyages toward Japan may have carried some of Leonardo’s ideas along narrow, select channels — an unofficial but cultural transmission.

A thread worth pulling, one that opens new perspectives on the technological exchanges between West and East.

Tuscany at the center of innovation

This discovery, entirely Tuscan, brings Florence and its school of thought back to the heart of the international debate around Leonardo — not merely as keepers of the past, but as interpreters of the future. Because the insight held in a single sentence can change the way we look at the history of technology, of art and of sustainability.

Leonardo, once again, speaks to us from the past in words of remarkable relevance.