
Jingo-ji Temple
Mountain Shingon temple reached by three hundred fifty stone steps, famed for maple foliage and hurling clay discs off a cliff.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Jingo-ji Temple in Kyoto centers on a silk portrait every Japanese schoolchild once recognized: a solemn face long identified as Minamoto no Yoritomo, founder of Japan's first shogunate. It follows the art historian who, in 1995, looked hard at the robes and brushwork and matched them to a document from a century and a half later, unsettling a century of certainty about who the painting shows. You'll hear why senior scholars still disagree. Climb the three hundred fifty stone steps to Mount Takao and you can still fling a clay disc off the cliff below the gate for luck.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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