八坂の塔

About this photo

From the photo album Kyoto Meisho (Famous Sights of Kyoto, 1907), this photo looks up at the Yasaka Pagoda from the near end of the street. Beyond a street lined on both sides by tile-roofed houses, a five-story pagoda rises high into the sky. Seven or eight people, among them someone holding a black parasol, stand in the street facing the camera.

The Yasaka Pagoda is the five-story pagoda of Hokanji, a temple of the Rinzai school of Zen. It is said to have been built by Prince Shotoku, and it burned three times between the end of the Heian period and the Muromachi period. The present pagoda was rebuilt in 1440 (Eikyo 12) by Ashikaga Yoshinori, shogun of the Muromachi shogunate, and it is 46 meters tall.

It is a national Important Cultural Property and is still a landmark of the Higashiyama townscape. Unusually for a five-story pagoda, visitors can go inside and climb to the second level (it is open only at irregular times).

Glossary