Kitano Tenmangu Shrine

This guide to Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto traces the exile of Sugawara no Michizane, a brilliant Heian court scholar banished by a rival family in 901 and dead in obscurity by 903, and the wave of drought, plague and lightning that struck Kyoto afterward. You'll hear how the frightened court came to believe his spirit was behind it, and why they built this shrine in 947 to calm him. Look for the more than fifteen hundred plum trees descended from the one he wrote to before he left, blooming across the grounds every February.