The Lost Kinkaku-ji: The Golden Pavilion You Can Enter

Описание: If you’ve ever visited Kyoto’s Kinkaku-ji, something in this print might feel off.
People are standing on the pavilion.
The gold looks different.
And the building itself doesn’t match the one we know today.

That’s because this is Utagawa Hiroshige’s Kinkaku-ji from 1834, showing the original Golden Pavilion — the one built by shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1397, long before the modern reconstruction.

Look closely:
• The pavilion wasn’t fully golden.
Only the top floor, Kukkyōchō, was gilded inside and out, crowned with a phoenix protecting a Buddha’s relic.
• The middle floor, Chōondō, had a wooden exterior with black lacquered interiors and a seated Kannon.
• The first floor, Hōsui-in, was plain timber — housing Shakyamuni Buddha and Yoshimitsu’s own statue.

These floors formed a symbolic ascent:
from the human → to the spiritual → to the enlightened realm.
The gold was never about luxury — it was about transcendence, legitimacy, and the brilliance of awakening.

And then, everything changed.

2 July 1950, 3:00 am.
A 21-year-old monk entered the first floor with flammable materials and set the pavilion on fire. Despite firefighters’ effort, by 3:50 am, it was gone — along with six cultural treasures, two of them national.
The monk survived a suicide attempt, was institutionalised, and died of illness in 1956. His true motive was never fully understood.

Reconstruction followed from 1952–1955, guided by surviving blueprints from a full dismantling done in the early 1900s.
But there was one major difference:

Both upper floors were gilded.
A choice shaped by myth, memory, and tourism — cementing the pavilion’s glowing iconography.
A 1987 restoration added nearly 200,000 gold-leaf sheets, giving us the radiant structure we see today.

And now, unlike in Hiroshige’s print, no one may enter it.
We can only admire it from across the pond — a shimmering symbol of Kyoto, of Japan, and of a temple that lived twice.

A pavilion that survived four centuries, vanished in fifty minutes, and rose again brighter than before.

What does today’s Kinkaku-ji mean to you?

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