Giōji Temple

This guide to Gioji Temple in Kyoto begins with a warlord's cruelty: in the late 1100s, Taira no Kiyomori summoned his cast-off lover, the dancer Gio, back to court to perform for the younger woman who had replaced her. It follows Gio as she shaves her head and withdraws with her mother and sister to this thatched hermitage above Saga, and traces what happened when her replacement, Hotoke Gozen, later sought her out. You'll see wooden statues of the women and of Kiyomori carved inside the small hall. More than a hundred varieties of moss now carpet the ground where their story played out.