Hannya-ji

This guide to Hannya-ji in Nara follows Yi Xingmo, a stonemason from Song-dynasty China who took the Japanese name I no Yukisue after wars burned Todai-ji to the ground, and traces how a scroll found inside the tower's fourth story in 1964 named him as its builder. It follows his years learning to cut a stone harder than anything his workshop had handled back home, and how his son Yukiyoshi carried the work forward after him. Look up at the thirteen granite discs narrowing toward the sky, cut from a stone that had never met a Japanese chisel before Yukisue arrived.