Kinkaku-ji

Quick facts

Address

1 Kinkakujicho, Kita-ku, Kyoto

Spiritual entities

Avalokiteśvara (Kannon · Gwaneum, 観音菩薩)

About this place

Kinkaku-ji, properly Rokuon-ji, stands in Kita, Kyoto. It began when Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, third shogun of the Muromachi shogunate, took over the country retreat of the Kamakura-period noble Saionji Kintsune and built his mountain villa Kitayama-dono there. After Yoshimitsu’s death it became a temple by his will, with Muso Kokushi as founding abbot, and was named Rokuon-ji from two characters of his posthumous title. The pavilion enshrines a Shaka triad on the first floor, a Kannon hall on the second, and the Buddha’s relics on the third.

Origin and history

What became Kinkaku-ji began as the country retreat of Saionji Kintsune, a noble of the Kamakura period. Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, third shogun of the Muromachi shogunate, took it over and built his mountain villa Kitayama-dono there.

After Yoshimitsu’s death it became a temple by his will. Muso Kokushi was made founding abbot, and the temple was named Rokuon-ji from two characters of Yoshimitsu’s posthumous title, Rokuon-in-dono.

The pavilion enshrines a Shaka triad on the first floor, a Kannon hall on the second, and the Buddha’s relics on the third.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spot

  What each of the three floors holds

  A Shaka triad on the first floor, a Kannon hall on the second, the Buddha’s relics on the third.

  documented history

• Origin

  Retreat, villa, then temple

  Yoshimitsu took over Saionji Kintsune’s retreat and built Kitayama-dono; after his death it became a temple by his will.

  documented history

• Origin

  Named from a posthumous title

  Muso Kokushi was made founding abbot, and the temple took two characters of Yoshimitsu’s posthumous title as its name.

  documented history

It is known as a gold building, but read the temple’s own description and it is a container, with something different on each of three floors. A Shaka triad below, Kannon in the middle, the Buddha’s relics at the top. That the relics sit highest is the structure of the thing.

It was not a temple to begin with. A noble’s retreat, taken over by a shogun as a villa, and made a temple after that shogun died, by his will. The name Rokuon-ji comes from two characters of Yoshimitsu’s posthumous title — the builder’s religious name became the temple’s name.

No category of prayer is attached. What the temple records is the passage from residence to temple.

Related guides

• How to visit a shrine or temple in JapanThe country-wide basics: purifying at the water basin, the two-bows-two-claps-one-bow form at shrines, and what temples do instead.
• What a "power spot" actually isA modern Japanese coinage, not a traditional religious category. Where the word came from, what it does and does not claim, and why this site uses it anyway.
• Shrine or temple?A shrine is Shinto and a temple is Buddhist, and you can usually tell at the gate. Why the line is cleaner on paper than on the ground, and what a government order in 1868 has to do with it.
• Omamori, ema, omikuji and goshuinThe four things you are most likely to receive, write, draw or be given at a shrine or temple, what each is actually for, and the one of them people most often get wrong.

Sources

1. 金閣寺について — 臨済宗相国寺派 — Shokoku-ji (accessed 2026-08-13)