Jisho-ji (Ginkaku-ji)

The Ginkaku of Jisho-ji stands in the Higashiyama villa built by Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eighth shogun of the Muromachi shogunate. Yoshimasa wished to withdraw from politics, and in 1464 he called his younger brother Yoshimi back to lay life and made him heir, but the next year his wife Hino Tomiko bore a son, Yoshihisa, which set off a dispute over the succession, and the Onin War (1467-77) burned much of Kyoto. Yoshimasa began building the Higashiyama villa in 1482, after the war, and in 1485 took Buddhist vows under the name Kizan Dokei. Before visiting, knowing that a shogun set out to make his own retreat amid a ruined capital changes how the building's quiet presence reads.

The Ginkaku is formally called the Kannon Hall, and construction began in March 1489. Yoshimasa is known to have visited Rokuon-ji without notice in 1487 to inspect the Relics Hall of the Kinkaku, which it is said to follow as a model. But Yoshimasa died on January 7, 1490, and never saw the Ginkaku finished. Between 1485 and 1487 the Zen practice hall, the private Buddha hall, the reception hall, and the Izumiden were completed one after another, and the Ginkaku was begun last. The Ginkaku, a National Treasure, is two stories with a pyramidal hip roof (hogyo-zukuri) and a shingle roof. The Togudo, also a National Treasure, was built as Yoshimasa's own private Buddha hall; it is single-story with a hip-and-gable roof and cypress-bark roofing. Seeing the two side by side makes clear that the Ginkaku shows itself through the grain of its wood and the lines of its roof, not through gilded decoration like the Kinkaku.

The garden is said to be the only one still in existence that Yoshimasa himself helped create. Yoshimasa was strongly influenced by Saiho-ji, known as the moss temple. Noami and his son Geiami, who catalogued the shogunate's art collection, and Noami's grandson Soami helped set the standards of the shoin style and supported the tea ceremony, which is how the restrained taste of Higashiyama culture is explained. Rather than looking only at the Ginkaku itself, stand in the garden and look across the pond at the building's outline to see how the slope of the roof and the surrounding trees fit together.

As a temple, Jisho-ji took Muso Soseki as its honorary founder after Yoshimasa's death in 1490 and was named Jisho-in, then renamed Jisho-ji in 1491. In 1550, in a battle between Miyoshi Chokei and the shogun Yoshiteru, almost every building except the Ginkaku and the Togudo burned. Its present form as a Zen temple is based on the restoration by Miyagi Tamba no Kami Toyomori in 1615. It stands in Sakyo Ward as a temple belonging to Shokoku-ji, so a visit to Shokoku-ji can be paired with it to trace the ties between the Ashikaga shoguns and Zen.