Tenryū-ji Temple

In front of you is the entrance to Tenryū-ji, the “temple of the heavenly dragon”, first in rank among Kyoto’s five great Zen temples. It was born of guilt.

1A temple for an enemy

In 1336 the warrior Ashikaga Takauji rebelled against Emperor Go-Daigo, whom he had earlier helped to power. Go-Daigo fled to the mountains of Yoshino, where he set up a rival court, and died there in 1339. That same year Takauji, by then shogun, founded this temple to pray for his soul. It was not an innocent gesture: people feared the spirit of a wronged emperor might bring disaster. The first abbot was the monk Musō Soseki, who also designed the garden.

The site already had a history: first a temple of Empress Danrin and later the villa of Emperors Go-Saga and Kameyama. To pay for the building work, trading ships were sent to China in 1342, the so-called “Tenryū-ji ships”. The temple was completed in 1345.

2A dragon in the river

According to tradition, Ashikaga Tadayoshi, the shogun’s brother, dreamt of a golden dragon rising from the river, and that is where the temple’s name is said to come from.

Tenryū-ji has burned many times, and most of its buildings date from the late Meiji era. But the Sōgen pond garden, laid out by Musō, keeps its 14th-century design.

Since 1994 it has been part of a World Heritage Site.

3What to look for

• The post with the temple’s name, beside the gate.
• The entrance path, with sub-temples on both sides.
• The mountains behind, which the garden borrows as part of its scenery.