- Built: 1397, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu
- Other Names: 鹿苑寺 (rokuon-ji)
- Japanese: 金閣寺 (kinkaku-ji)
Kinkaku-ji, also known as the Golden Pavilion, is one of the most famous and recognizable Buddhist temple halls in Japan. One of the many sites comprising the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto World Heritage Site, the temple was hall was built by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1397, to serve as the focus of a private retirement estate.
The retirement estate later became a Buddhist temple; though the temple is more properly named Rokuon-ji, it is commonly referred to as Kinkaku-ji for this most famous structure. The building itself is three stories tall, and intended to serve chiefly as a pavilion from which to admire the garden, though it does contain religious sculpture. The first floor contained spaces for receiving guests, including an exterior porch for accessing small boats, which one might row on the pond. The pavilion's reflection in the pond is often included in depictions and descriptions of its beauty. The second story was intended for more private meetings, and the third for Yoshimitsu's personal private use.
The top two stories are gilded on the outside, and the building is topped with a golden phoenix finial. A disgruntled monk destroyed the pavilion in 1950, in an act of arson which forms the focus of the novel Kinkaku-ji (or, in English translations, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) by Mishima Yukio. The Kinkaku was rebuilt, restored, five years later. The extent to which gold was used in the original construction is unclear, but it is generally believed that the latest restoration effort, when the pavilion was re-gilded in 1987, employed a thicker and more extensive covering of gold than the building ever possessed previously.
A replica of the Kinkaku-ji stands in the Kyoto Gardens of Honolulu Memorial Park.
References
- Ching, Francis D.K. et al. A Global History of Architecture. Second Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. p444.