Chikurinji Temple

Temple 31 of the Shikoku pilgrimage, on the wooded hill of Godaisan above Kochi city, founded in 724 by the monk Gyoki after Emperor Shomu dreamed of Mount Wutai in China and ordered a Japanese equivalent built. The hill was named for that dream. It is one of the better temples on the circuit, and busier with day visitors than with pilgrims. The five-storey pagoda dates from 1980 and looks older than it is among the cedars. The garden behind the main hall is attributed to Muso Soseki and is a designated national site of scenic beauty: a dry landscape on one side, a pond circuit on the other, and no crowd on either. The treasure hall is the reason to pay. Seventeen Buddhist statues from the Heian and Kamakura periods are displayed in a dim modern room, all of them Important Cultural Properties, and they are shown close enough that you can see the tool marks. The temple also has a song attached to it. Yosakoi Bushi, the Kochi folk tune, tells of a monk from here who was caught buying a hairpin for a young woman, a small scandal that grew into a song and eventually into the Yosakoi festival that fills Kochi every August and has been copied by cities all over Japan. Next door on the same hill is the Makino Botanical Garden, dedicated to Makino Tomitaro, the self-taught botanist who named over 1,500 Japanese plants and became a household name again after a 2023 television drama about him. It is excellent and needs two hours of its own. Buses run from Kochi station in about half an hour. Entry to the garden and treasure hall is around 400 yen.