Jakkō-in Temple
Mountain nunnery with a rebuilt hall and the scorched trunk of a thousand-year pine, once witness to an exiled empress.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Jakko-in in the hills north of Kyoto follows Taira no Tokuko, mother of Japan's boy emperor, who survived the Taira clan's annihilation at the 1285 Battle of Dan-no-ura when enemy hands pulled her from the sea. It follows her into life as the nun Kenreimon-in at this mountain nunnery, and to a 1186 visit from the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa, her adoptive father, held beneath a pine already said to be a thousand years old. You'll hear what passed between them that day, their last meeting. Listen for the ancient pine standing in the garden facing the hall.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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