Hokoku-jinja (Senjokaku Pavilion)

This guide to Hokoku-jinja's Senjokaku Pavilion on Miyajima, near Hiroshima, opens with a name that doesn't add up: it's called the Hall of a Thousand Mats, though far fewer actually fit inside. It follows warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 1587 order for a great sutra hall meant to hold monks chanting for soldiers in his Korean campaigns, and the priest-turned-general, Ankokuji Ekei, he put in charge before sending him off to fight that same war. Look up at the bare, unpainted rafters left behind, and down at the pillars later generations carved with actors' names and comic verse.