The Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku) is a three-story viewing and pleasure pavilion constructed on the edge of a pond as the focal point to a much larger garden on the grounds of the Rokuonji Temple. It gains its more popular name of 'Kinkakuji' from the gold plating on the exterior of the pavilion.
The site in northern Kyoto was the developed as a large retirement estate by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1409) beginning in 1394. The pavilion itself was sited at the edge of a sprawling palace complex that no longer exists. This was intended as proof that the warrior shogunate could contribute to the cultural and aesthetic life of the land to an extent equal to that of the imperial aristocracy. This was born out by the visit from the emporer in 1408, the first time an emperor had ever stayed with a person that was not a member of the imperial court. The shogun died the following year. The palace complex was turned over to the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism upon Yoshimitsu's death and it has remained in their care since then.
The pavilion is based on the Chinese Sung style, though each floor has a somewhat different aesthetic. The first floor was used as a reception room for guests and as boarding site for pleasure boating around the small pond. The second story was for more private parties with an outstanding view of the garden. The third floor was an intimate space for meeting with confidantes and holding tea ceremony. Originally, only the ceiling of the pavilion's third floor was gilt, but in 1950, a student monk burned the pavilion to the ground. When an exact replica was reconstructed in its place, it was decided to cover the exterior in its namesake gold.
The grounds surrounding the pavilion lie on four and a half acres, but the use of landscape elements make its apparent size much larger. The foreground is filled with small scale rocks and plantings. The more distant elements blend into the background, visually extending the garden. Mt Kinugasa rises in the background. Meanwhile, the chaotic shoreline undulates to and fro, disguising the pond's true size.
The delicate nature of the pavilion make entry by the large number of annual visitors impossible. Most people follow a path that encircles the pond and then continues up the side of a hill to a very rustic tea pavilion.
Further Reading
Mishima Yukio. translated by Ivan Morris. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Princeton, NJ: ***, 1969.
Hisafumi Uehara, Kinkakuji, Kyoto.
Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto
Only in the cloister
Could such a garden thrive, a soil where nature
Flowers in spiritual dryness,
Drawing an interior nurture
From sand and rock.
Where the labyrinth of illusion
No longer entangles the senses
Enmeshing vision in delusive lusters;
Where the lust of the eyes is silenced
And desire of forms, and names of forms,
Move to no visible end.
Those who planted here
Sowed no ephemeral seed
For the seasonal tempests to scatter,
But the silent root that ripens in detachment,
Flowers in renunciation.
Gardeners of eternity,
Those who planted here
Framed the garden in the image of a desert
And the desert in the image of a sea --
Then shrunk the seas to the mind's salt and, tasting,
Dissolved all thought away.
On these rocks no water breaks. Without attrition
Tides and currents in this ocean rest and revolve
In a void of sound, vortex of sand; perpetual
Circles enmesh and paralyzed sea and air:
The effigy of time and measure
Purged of time and measure
Becalmed on this dead sea of being
No wave moves, no wind of desire
Flexes the indolent sail.
But focussing its single eye
On dreamless immobility
The gulf like a burnished mirror
Regards the empty void.
In this dead sea of vision the surges
Merge without movement; the tides
Indifferent to flood and ebb
Freeze in a flux of haste.
The seagull without motion
Broods on the changeless waste,
Then sinks, his feathers frozen,
In a sand ocean.
Frail caravels who sail
This subtle gulf, morte mer,
Who stir with urgent keel
The fossil waters of the Great Mirage,
Or steer by lodestone to delusive ports:
In this calm beyond stasis, dead calm,
No compass points to the land,
No magnet of attachment
Guides the helmsman's hand
Through fifteen naked rocks in raked and rhythmic sand.
Here is no sea for the admirals,
The whalers, the merchants of cargoes --
Those finite venturers for the temporal haven.
These depths are destination,
And naufrage sweeter than harbor.
Shipwreck is haven on this inland sea.
