Ginkaku-ji

The dark wooden pavilion by the pond is called the Silver Pavilion, though there is no silver on it. At the end of the fifteenth century, this was not a monastery but the country palace of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eighth shogun—a military ruler of Japan. Yoshimasa chose its site where a man he himself had appointed as his heir had once lived.

The shogun had no son for a long time. In fourteen sixty-four, he summoned his younger brother Yoshimi from Jodo-ji, the monastery that stood on this site. Yoshimi had already become a monk; for the promised position of shogun, he returned to secular life. But a year later, Yoshimasa's wife Hino Tomiko gave birth to a boy, Yoshihisa, and began seeking the inheritance for her son.

Yoshimi supported one alliance of military houses, while Tomiko and the child supported another. Old feuds among military commanders joined the dispute over the heir, and the Onin War began in fourteen sixty-seven. Eleven years of fighting brought no decisive victory, but destroyed a considerable part of Kyoto. Jodo-ji, Yoshimi's former monastic home, burned down as well.

The eight-year-old Yoshihisa became shogun, although his father continued to take part in governing. In fourteen eighty-two, Yoshimasa began building himself a palace on the very site of the burned Jodo-ji, and moved here a year later. Where his brother had lived as a monk before being promised the position of heir, there arose the residence of the man who ultimately chose his own son.

Yoshimasa gathered experts in painting, the tea ceremony, incense, flower arrangements, and Noh theatre here. A private Buddhist hall, Togu-do, with a study was built for him; it is the second structure of the original palace to survive to this day. Inside are Japan's oldest built-in writing desk and stepped shelves—an example of room arrangement that later spread through residential architecture.

Work on the two-story pavilion by the pond began only in March fourteen eighty-nine. Two years earlier, Yoshimasa had arrived without warning to inspect his grandfather's Kinkaku-ji and ordered that it be used as a model. Officially, the new building was called Kannon-den—the Hall of Kannon.

That same year, the twenty-four-year-old Yoshihisa died during a military campaign, leaving no heir. Yoshimasa himself fell ill in the autumn. He died on January seventh, fourteen ninety, without ever seeing the pavilion completed. Yoshimi's son became the next shogun: the position did after all pass to the family of the brother who had once been taken from the monastery for it.

Under Yoshimasa's will, the palace was turned into a Zen temple and named Jisho-ji, after his posthumous Buddhist name, Jishoin. The name Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion Temple, appeared later, in the Edo period, when the building began to be compared with Kinkaku-ji. An examination of the walls during repairs in two thousand seven found no traces of silver leaf; the upper floor was originally covered with black lacquer. Kannon-den by the pond remains, the pavilion Yoshimasa began to build but did not live to see completed.