Ujikami Shrine

This guide to Ujikami Shrine in Kyoto opens with a strange gap in Japanese history: three years without an emperor, after a prince named Uji no Wakiiratsuko refused the throne his father had chosen for him over his own brothers. It follows the standoff between the brothers and the shrine later built to honor them, then turns to what researchers found when they examined the hall's ancient timbers. A spring called Kiriharasui still rises beside it, the same water the site was built around a thousand years ago.