Chishakuin Temple

This guide to Chishakuin Temple in Kyoto opens in 1591, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ruler of Japan, lost his three-year-old son and ordered a memorial temple built, hiring two of the era's finest painters, Hasegawa Tohaku and his son Kyuzo, to cover its walls in gold. It follows Kyuzo's cherry-blossom screens for the guest hall, judged by one later critic more elegant than his father's, and the painter's own death in his mid-twenties, soon after finishing them. You'll hear how the temple passed to the monks here in 1615 and survived a fire in 1682 that sent monks dragging the singed screens out by hand. Look for the gold-leaf cherry blossoms and maple leaves in the treasure hall ahead.