Chugu-ji

This guide to Chugu-ji in Nara follows the nun Shinnyo, who arrived around 1262 to save a crumbling ancient nunnery and set herself an odd first task: pinning down the exact death date of Princess Hashihito, whose old palace had become this temple. The trail leads back to a grieving widow's enormous silk hanging, embroidered with a hundred tiny tortoises each carrying names and dates, and forward to Shinnyo raising funds coin by coin to save what she found. The fragile cloth itself now lives at the Nara National Museum for safekeeping, while the temple's calm-faced Miroku Bosatsu, carved from camphor wood, remains here for you to sit with.