Saihō-ji (Moss Temple)

Saihō-ji, better known as Koke-dera, the Moss Temple, lies at the foot of the western hills of Kyoto, and its garden is one of the most celebrated in Japan. Under the trees, the ground is carpeted in moss — more than 120 kinds of it, in shades from lime to deep bottle-green — spreading over banks, roots, stones and islands so evenly that the whole wood seems upholstered. Paths lead in a loop around the Golden Pond, whose outline is said to trace the character 心, "heart" or "mind", with three islands set in its water. In soft rain the colours are at their richest, and the silence is part of the design.

The temple's history is older than its moss. Tradition attributes its foundation to the monk Gyōki in 731, in the Nara period, as a temple of the Hossō school. Its decisive moment came in 1339, when the Zen master Musō Soseki was invited to revive it as a Rinzai Zen temple and redesigned its grounds. His work here shaped both halves of the grounds: the pond garden and, in the northern part, a Zen rock garden beside the Shitō-an hall, whose arrangement of stones is said to show Musō's creative genius at its fullest.

The famous carpet, however, is partly an accident of time. During the Edo period the monastery could not afford to maintain its grounds, floods damaged them repeatedly, and moss spread on its own, especially in the Meiji era (1868–1912). What Musō intended as a garden of water, stone and sand became a garden of moss. Several tea houses stand in the grounds, among them the Shōnan-tei, whose origins go back to the 14th century. Since 1977 the temple has admitted visitors only by advance application, and a visit begins not in the garden but in the hall, with a period of sutra copying — so the garden is seen slowly and by relatively few people at a time. Saihō-ji is part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994.

Getting there

The temple is in the Matsuo area of Nishikyō Ward in western Kyoto, about 2.5 km south of Arashiyama. Kyoto Bus route 73 runs from Kyoto Station via Arashiyama to the Kokedera Suzumushidera stop, a few minutes' walk away; alternatively, Matsuo-taisha Station on the Hankyu Arashiyama Line is about 20 minutes on foot. The nearest airport is Osaka Itami (ITM), about 32 km away.