Sensō-ji

This guide to Sensō-ji follows its giant red lantern gate through four fires, the last of which left Asakusa without it for roughly ninety-five years, pilgrims walking through empty space where its guardian gods once stood. It picks up in the late 1950s, when the temple's chief priest went looking for money to rebuild and found one of Japan's richest industrialists willing to give it, on one unusual condition. That industrialist, Konosuke Matsushita, founded the company that became Panasonic.