Kinpusen-ji

The area stretching from Yoshinoyama to Mount Sanjogatake has long been a sacred site known as Kinpusen. According to the official site, in the Hakuho period the ascetic En no Gyoja trained for a thousand days of seclusion on Sanjogatake, perceived the deity Kongo Zao Gongen, and carved its image in wild cherry wood to enshrine at the summit and in Yoshinoyama. This is said to be the founding of Kinpusen-ji and the beginning of Shugendo. It was abolished for a time by the separation of Shinto and Buddhism in the early Meiji era, but was revived as a Buddhist temple and is now the head temple of the Kinpusen Shugen Honshu sect. In 2004 it was inscribed as part of the World Heritage site "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range."

The main hall, Zao-do, is a single-story hip-and-gable building with a skirt roof and cypress-bark roofing; it is 34 meters high and 36 meters on each side at the skirt roof. The official site says it is the largest old wooden building after the Great Buddha Hall of Todai-ji. Its founding is attributed to En no Gyoja, but it has burned and been rebuilt repeatedly. The Taiheiki says it burned in 1348 when Ko no Moronao attacked, and it burned again in 1586. The present building was completed around 1592. Inside is a shrine said to be Japan's largest, holding three hidden statues of Zao Gongen as the principal images. The central one is a colossus of more than seven meters.

The Nio-mon, the main gate on the north side, faces north, whereas the Zao-do faces south. It is the gate that welcomes people entering the Yoshino-Omine area from the north, such as from the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe region. It is a two-story hip-and-gable gate with tiled roofing, standing on a castle-like stone wall, 20.3 meters high. Its founding is unknown, but the lower story is estimated to date from the Nanbokucho period and the upper story from the Kosho era, and it is the oldest of the surviving buildings at Kinpusen-ji. The guardian statues on either side are about five meters tall and are attributed to the Nara sculptor Kojo. A major repair of the gate began in 2018, so check the official site for the situation of the statues.

Around the temple are many places tied to the history of the Northern and Southern Courts. The Four Cherry Trees, inside a stone fence in the Zao-do grounds, mark where Prince Moriyoshi (Daito-no-miya) held a last banquet in 1333, expecting Yoshino to fall to the Kamakura shogunate forces; the cherries are replanted at the site of the camp-curtain posts. About 200 meters north of the Nio-mon stands the Important Cultural Property Kane-no-torii, the first of four gates on the way up to Omine-san, called Hosshin-mon. Walking the mountain path from the Zao-do and returning to the hall from the gate that marks the entrance to ascetic practice makes the route of mountain faith easy to follow.