KINKAKUJI (Golden Pavilion Temple)

Walk too much, change train many times, stand among the very crowed in shuttle bus for a long long time, carry a heavy kit-bag. My leg had a deep injury. I was really tired. So, my face looked…

However, I visit a Zen Temple as I wish.

Let’s enjoy traveling with me.

Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion Temple) is the common nickname of the Rokuonji (Deer Garden Temple) Zen temple in Kyoto, Japan.

Kinkakuji was built in 1393 as a retirement villa for Shogun Yoshimitsu Ashikaga (1358-1409), who quit politics the following year to manage the affairs of state through the new shogun, his 10-year-old son.

The beauty of the shogun's pavilion makes it difficult to imagine the era in which he lived out his retirement: the country was in turmoil and Kyoto residents suffered severe famines and plagues — local death tolls sometimes reached 1,000 a day.

After his death, his son converted the building into a Zen temple of the Rinzai school, in accordance with Ashikaga's wishes.

The temple was burned down several times during the Onin War. In 1950, the Golden Pavilion was again burned down, this time by a fanatical monk. A fictionalized version of the events is at the center of Yukio Mishima's 1956 book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

The present structure dates from 1955, which is true to the original except that both upper stories are covered in gold leaf, in accordance with Ashikaga's original intentions.

The best known feature of the temple complex is the Golden Pavilion (kinka-ku) situated picturesquely in its garden. In accordance with the Shinden style of the Heian period, it stands at the edge of a lake. The three-story pavilion extends over the pond and is reflected in the calm waters, an image designed to suggest an existence somewhere between heaven and earth. The harmony of the pavilion and its reflection make Kinkaku-ji one of Kyoto's most powerful visions.

Here, you throw coin away to get luck !

To underscore this statement of his prestige and power, the shogun had the ceiling of the third floor of the pavilion covered in gold leaf. Today, the entire pavilion except the basement floor is covered with pure gold leaf, making the temple extremely valuable. The pavilion is also spiritually valueable: it is a shariden, housing relics of the Buddha.

The first floor of the pavilion, known as the Hôsuiin ("Temple of Dharma Water"), is built in the shinden style (shinden zukuri) associated with Heian-period nobility.

The second story, called the Chôondô ("Grotto of Wave Sounds"), is built in the buke style (buke zukuri) used for samurai houses.

The third floor is built in the style of a Buddha Hall from a Chinese Chan (Zen) temple and is known as the Kukkyôchô ("Superb Apex").