Shin Yakushi-ji

This guide to Shin Yakushi-ji in Nara opens with the lightning strike of 780 that burned down the vast temple complex Empress Komyo had founded decades earlier, sparing only its plain old dining hall, which the monks pressed into service as the new main hall. Inside stands Yakushi, the buddha of medicine, carved from a single hinoki log, ringed by twelve clay generals built over rope-wrapped wood cores more than twelve hundred years ago. Walk the circle slowly, since not every general in that ring has stood there since the Nara period.