Yama-dera (Risshaku-ji)

Yama-dera, the "mountain temple", is the everyday name of Risshaku-ji, a Tendai Buddhist temple whose halls are scattered up a steep, wooded crag above a river valley north-east of Yamagata. The pleasure of it is the climb: a path of some 1,015 stone steps winds up through old trees, past stone lanterns, Buddhist images and small halls tucked into the cliff, until the forest opens and wooden pavilions appear perched on ledges over the void. Seen from the valley floor, the buildings look as if they have been stuck onto the rock face.

According to temple tradition, the monk Ennin, who had studied in Tang China and led the Tendai school at Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, founded the temple in 860 on the order of Emperor Seiwa; the oldest wooden statues confirm that it dates at least to the early Heian period, and the sacred flame carried from Enryaku-ji is still kept burning in the main hall. In a cave in the grounds, excavated in 1948, a gilded coffin held human remains and part of a Heian-period wooden statue of Ennin, keeping alive the belief that he lies here. The main hall at the foot of the mountain, the Konpon-chūdō, was rebuilt in the fourteenth century by Shiba Kaneyori, lord of Yamagata Castle, and is among the temple's nationally designated cultural properties, along with a stone stele inscribed with the Lotus Sutra in 1144 and a tiny three-storey pagoda of 1519 kept in a stone shrine. The painter Sesshū came here to sketch in 1482.

Yama-dera is above all a place of sound and silence. In 1689 the poet Matsuo Bashō climbed the mountain and wrote one of his best-known haiku here, about the cry of cicadas soaking into the rocks; in summer the insects still drown out every other noise, and the cicadas of Yama-dera are listed among the 100 Soundscapes of Japan. At the top, the Godaidō, an open hall built out over the cliff edge, gives the classic view down over the valley and the village below. A museum dedicated to Bashō stands on the hill across the valley. The temple is both a National Historic Site and a Place of Scenic Beauty, and it changes completely with the seasons, from the din of cicada summer to snow lying on the approach in winter.

Getting there

The temple is next to Yamadera Station on the JR Senzan Line, about seven minutes' walk from the entrance at the foot of the mountain. The town of Tendō is about 7.5 km away, and Yamagata Airport (GAJ) about 12.5 km. By road, the Yamagata-kita interchange on the Yamagata Expressway is about 10 km away.