Jakkō-in Temple

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.