Komyo-in Temple

This guide to Komyo-in Temple in Kyoto follows Mirei Shigemori, an unproven forty-three-year-old designer who spent three years sketching gardens across Japan before getting his first major commission here in 1939, rebuilding a garden a typhoon had destroyed five years earlier. It traces the meaning behind his raked-gravel sea and trios of stone, and the small teahouse with its moon-shaped window. Look for the moss so thick locals call this the rainbow moss temple.