The Momiji Diaries – Part 4 – Kyoto, Agon-shu
by Jade Pavilions on 27/05/09 at 8:30 pm
10th November, Coach tour East and South of Kyoto
As this was the first day with the group, we laid on a visit to the head temple of the Agon-shu Buddhist sect by chartered coach. Agon-shu is a new sect only a few decades old with a mountain top eyrie. 
The building is fabulous and exudes wealth. It is the training centre and head quarters with only a few resident staff. The sect appears to believe in fire walking as part of it’s meditation…. We were welcomed with a short presentation and tea/sweet in the traditional way and escorted around the extensive gardens. The tour takes you down a hundred steep steps to the bottom of the cascading stream, which ends in a large pond with bridge. 
The maples and enkianthus were showing a fiery red. The other side of the staircase is a dry landscape garden on the hillside with many large rocks and ancient trees. The colour of the maples here at higher altitudes were superb. Returning up through the stream garden to the temple we were ushered back inside (shoes off) and out onto the balcony with it’s elevated view of another landscape garden. The path then winds up through the dry landscape garden and onto the hillside following the stream to the statue of the Buddha at the summit. A truly awesome garden and a good one to start the official tour. Note this garden is not open to the public and not much information can be found about it on the Internet.
We left the monastery and headed south to the Daigo-ji temple complex with it’s famous 5 storey pagoda and Sanbo-in garden. Unfortunately guides were posted on all corners of the garden to prevent photography. This is forbidden at a few temples, I suspect is an attempt to promote their own illustrated books. The garden was designed by the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1598 for an extravagant cherry blossom viewing party, recreating the elegant atmosphere of the Momoyama period with its pond and islands with raised earthen bridges. The site covers an extensive area of the hillside with a number of buildings including the pagoda seen here. We had a traditional o-bento Japanese luncheon box with all manner of nibbles, some recognisable, others not.
We headed off to the large shrine of Jonan-gu situated in holy woods to the south of Kyoto where the deities are said to reside. The large Garden of the Flowers of the Tale of the Genji (first surviving novel and court record of the Heian period) in which there is a number of smaller gardens representing different periods of Japanese history. The Heian garden has a natural pond and small winding stream which cascades through the trees in a series of small falls. The Muromachi period garden has a pond with island and waterfall. The Momoyama period garden has a spacious sea of lawn with a mountain range represented by clipped trees and an island of cycad trees. The final garden is that of the ancient Jonan Imperial Villa with it’s impressive dry rock arrangement (seen here). Being Autumn there was a fine display of chrysanthemums, both blooms and bonsiaed. The shock and awe tactics worked and the group was suitable wowed by the gardens if not by the lunch.
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