Hokke-ji

This guide to Hokke-ji in Nara follows Empress Komyo's vow to personally bathe and scrub a thousand of Nara's sick and outcast in a steam room she built here in the 700s, and the day the count reached its final, most demanding request. It then turns from legend to history, questioning how faithfully the story handed down at this nunnery matches what older texts actually recorded elsewhere. The reconstructed karafuro bathhouse still opens twice a year, on Komyo's death anniversary, for ritual steam bathing you can watch from the gate.