Daitoku-ji Temple

This guide to Daitoku-ji in Kyoto centers on Sen no Rikyu, the tea master who shaped the Japanese tea ceremony and served as closest advisor to the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It traces how, in the 1580s, Rikyu paid to add a second story to the temple's grand gate, and how grateful monks placed a wooden statue of him up there, sandals and all. Everyone who passed beneath the gate afterward, monks, nobles, and Hideyoshi himself, had to walk directly under Rikyu's carved feet.