Hiraizumi

For a hundred years, from 1087, this small town in Iwate was the second city of Japan. The Northern Fujiwara held the gold mines of the northeast and used the money to build a capital meant to rival Kyoto, along with a Pure Land Buddhism that promised paradise on earth rather than after death. Three generations later Minamoto no Yoritomo destroyed them, and almost all of it went.

What survived is the Konjikido, the golden hall at Chuson-ji, finished in 1124. It is small, about five and a half metres square, and every surface is covered in gold leaf, lacquer and inlaid mother-of-pearl. Under its three altars lie the mummified bodies of the first three Fujiwara lords, and the severed head of the fourth. The hall now stands inside a concrete shelter behind glass, which is not romantic but is why it is still here.

Motsu-ji, ten minutes away, is the opposite kind of survival: the buildings are gone and only the foundation stones remain, but the Pure Land garden around its pond is intact, and it is the best-preserved Heian garden in Japan. Nothing has been rebuilt on top of it.

Yoshitsune, the general who won the Genpei war for his brother and was hunted down for it, died here in 1189. Basho stood on the same hill in 1689, looked at the grass growing over the ruins, and wrote the haiku about summer grass and the dreams of warriors that every Japanese schoolchild learns.

The whole site was listed by UNESCO in 2011. Chuson-ji charges around 1,000 yen. Ichinoseki, eight minutes away by train, is the Shinkansen stop.