Kinkaku-ji (1397): Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's Golden Pavilion

Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, is a Zen Buddhist temple in northern Kyoto, famous for a three-storey pavilion whose upper floors are covered in gold leaf. It began in 1397 as the retirement villa of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the most powerful of the Ashikaga shoguns, and became a Zen temple after his death in 1408. Burned by an arsonist in 1950 and rebuilt in 1955, it is today one of the best-known buildings in Japan and a symbol of the refined culture of the Muromachi period.

Background: the Ashikaga shoguns and Kyoto

In 1336 the warrior Ashikaga Takauji established a new military government in Kyoto, known as the Ashikaga shogunate or Muromachi shogunate, after the Kyoto district where its headquarters later stood. Unlike the earlier Kamakura shogunate, which ruled from eastern Japan, the Ashikaga lived alongside the imperial court in the old capital founded as Heian-kyō. Warriors, court nobles and Zen monks mixed closely, and their tastes blended into a new elite culture.

For most of the fourteenth century Japan was divided between two rival imperial courts, the Northern Court in Kyoto backed by the Ashikaga and the Southern Court in the mountains of Yoshino. The third shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), ended this split in 1392 by negotiating the reunification of the two lines. He also crushed rebellious provincial lords, and by the 1390s he was the dominant figure in Japanese politics.

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and the Kitayama villa

Yoshimitsu became shogun as a child in 1368. In 1394 he handed the title to his young son, Ashikaga Yoshimochi, and was appointed Grand Chancellor (Daijō-daijin), the highest office of the imperial court. The following year he resigned that post too and took Buddhist vows. Retirement, however, did not mean giving up power: like retired emperors before him, Yoshimitsu continued to control government from behind the scenes.

In 1397 he acquired an estate in the northern hills of Kyoto, an area called Kitayama, from the aristocratic Saionji family, who had built a villa and temple there in the 1220s. Yoshimitsu rebuilt it on a grand scale as his residence, known as Kitayama-dono, the Kitayama Palace. The complex contained halls for living, receiving guests and Buddhist worship, set within a landscaped garden around a large pond. Its most striking building was a gilded reliquary hall, the pavilion we now call Kinkaku.

From Kitayama, Yoshimitsu conducted diplomacy as well as domestic politics. He opened official relations with Ming China, received Chinese envoys and in 1402 was addressed by the Ming emperor as “King of Japan”, which made possible an official trade in which licensed Japanese ships carried goods to China from 1404. In 1408 he entertained Emperor Go-Komatsu at the villa for about three weeks, an event that showed his near-royal status.

The Golden Pavilion’s design

The pavilion stands at the edge of the pond, called Kyōkochi, or Mirror Pond, so that its reflection doubles its image on calm days. It is about 12.5 metres tall, and each of its three storeys was built in a different architectural style:

• First floor, Hōsui-in: built in the shinden style of Heian-period aristocratic palaces, with natural unpainted wood and white plaster, and open to the garden.
• Second floor, Chōon-dō: built in the style of a samurai residence, enshrining an image of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. Its exterior is covered in gold leaf.
• Third floor, Kukkyō-chō: built in the Chinese-influenced style of a Zen Buddhist hall, with bell-shaped windows, also gilded inside and out. It is said to have held relics of the Buddha.

A gilded bronze phoenix crowns the roof, which is covered with layers of Japanese cypress bark. Many historians interpret the stacking of styles as a statement about Yoshimitsu’s position: aristocratic court culture at the base, warrior power in the middle and Zen Buddhism, with its Chinese prestige, at the top. Others caution that such symbolic readings are later interpretations and that the design also reflects fashionable Chinese-inspired pavilion architecture of the time.

The surrounding garden is a classic example of a stroll garden of the Muromachi period. The pond contains small islands planted with pines and rocks said to have been donated by powerful lords, and the hillside behind provides a “borrowed landscape” of trees that makes the garden appear larger than it is.

From villa to Zen temple

Yoshimitsu died in 1408. According to his wishes, his son Yoshimochi converted the villa into a Zen temple of the Rinzai school. It was named Rokuon-ji, after Yoshimitsu’s posthumous Buddhist name, Rokuon-in. The great Zen master Musō Soseki, who had died in 1351, was honoured as its spiritual founder. Yoshimochi dismantled or moved many of his father’s other buildings, but the golden pavilion was kept.

The temple suffered during the Ōnin War of 1467–1477, a civil conflict that devastated much of Kyoto. Many of its halls burned, but the pavilion survived. In later centuries the temple was repaired by its patrons, and a teahouse and other structures were added during the Edo period. A full dismantling and repair of the pavilion was carried out between 1904 and 1906, and the detailed drawings made at that time proved crucial later.

Kitayama culture

Yoshimitsu’s era is often called the Kitayama period, after his villa. It was a time of rich cultural patronage that mixed the tastes of court nobles, warriors and Zen monks. Yoshimitsu supported the actor-playwrights Kan’ami and his son Zeami, whose work turned the popular theatre of the time into Noh drama. Zen monasteries, especially the “Five Mountains” (Gozan) temples, became centres of Chinese learning, poetry and ink painting.

Later generations contrasted the opulent Kitayama style with the quieter Higashiyama culture of Yoshimitsu’s grandson, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who began building his own retreat in eastern Kyoto in 1482. Its main pavilion became known as Ginkaku, the Silver Pavilion, although it was never covered in silver.

The 1950 fire and reconstruction

In the early hours of 2 July 1950, the pavilion was set on fire by Hayashi Yoken, a 21-year-old novice monk at the temple. The building burned to the ground, and the statue of Yoshimitsu inside it was destroyed. Hayashi, who was found to be suffering from mental illness, was sentenced to prison and died in 1956. His motives have never been fully explained.

The fire shocked Japan. It inspired Yukio Mishima’s novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956), a fictional study of a young monk’s obsession with the building’s beauty, and Kon Ichikawa’s film Enjō (1958). A new pavilion, built on the original foundations and following the records of the 1904–1906 repair, was completed in 1955.

Restoration work continued afterwards. The gold leaf of the 1955 building weathered quickly, and in 1987 a major restoration covered the upper floors with new, thicker gold leaf over lacquer. The roof was re-covered with new cypress bark in 2020. Some researchers believe that in Yoshimitsu’s time the gilding may have been more limited than today, but the evidence is fragmentary.

Myths and facts

• Myth: The building visitors see is the original from 1397. Fact: The original burned in 1950; the present pavilion is a 1955 reconstruction.
• Myth: Kinkaku-ji is the temple’s official name. Fact: The official name is Rokuon-ji.
• Myth: Its sister, the Silver Pavilion, was meant to be covered in silver. Fact: There is no clear evidence that silver was ever applied; the name became popular only later.

Timeline

• 1220s: the Saionji family builds a villa and temple at Kitayama.
• 1392: Yoshimitsu reunifies the Northern and Southern Courts.
• 1397: Yoshimitsu acquires the estate and begins building Kitayama-dono.
• 1402: the Ming emperor recognises Yoshimitsu as King of Japan.
• 1408: Emperor Go-Komatsu visits; Yoshimitsu dies later that year.
• After 1408: the villa becomes the Zen temple Rokuon-ji.
• 1467–1477: Ōnin War; temple halls burn, but the pavilion survives.
• 1904–1906: the pavilion is dismantled and repaired.
• 2 July 1950: the pavilion is destroyed by arson.
• 1955: the reconstructed pavilion is completed; regilded in 1987.

Legacy

Kinkaku-ji is one of Japan’s most visited sites and a centrepiece of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, inscribed in 1994. It shaped the image of the Ashikaga shoguns as patrons of art and Zen, and its blend of building styles became a model for later pavilions in Japanese gardens.

The temple is still an active Zen institution, administered as a sub-temple of Shōkoku-ji, the large Rinzai monastery that Yoshimitsu himself founded in Kyoto in the 1380s. Visitors follow a set path around the pond, past the pavilion, the abbot’s quarters and the small Sekka-tei teahouse of the Edo period, so the garden is still experienced much as a stroll garden was meant to be.

The pavilion also became a powerful image in modern culture. Mishima’s novel turned it into a symbol of absolute, almost unbearable beauty, and photographs of the building in snow or autumn colours are among the most familiar pictures of Japan abroad. For many Japanese, its loss and rebuilding after 1950 also came to stand for the nation’s recovery after the Second World War.

Why it matters

The Golden Pavilion captures a moment when a warrior ruler presented himself as the equal of emperors and the patron of Chinese-inspired Zen culture. Its survival through civil war, its destruction in 1950 and its rebuilding have made it a symbol not only of medieval Japanese art but also of how Japan preserves and remembers its heritage.