Yamadera (Risshakuji)

Risshakuji stands on a rock mountain outside the city of Yamagata. It belongs to the Tendai school, and its halls are set at different heights up the rock, joined by a stone stairway that climbs from the foot to the topmost hall. Almost everyone calls it Yamadera, the mountain temple.

The temple was founded in 860 by the monk Ennin, third head of the Tendai school in Japan, who is also known by the title Jikaku Daishi. By the temple's account he bought the land from its owner for a thousand ryo of gold dust and three thousand bolts of hemp cloth, taking in the country for some distance around, and set up more than three hundred halls and pagodas from which to teach.

A flame was carried here at the founding from Enryakuji, the head temple of the school, where it had been lit by Saicho, who brought the Tendai school to Japan. It has been kept burning ever since and is called the undying lamp. Incense has likewise been kept alight before Ennin's memorial, and the temple has maintained an unbroken practice of copying sutras.

The temple's quarters flourished in the Kamakura period. In the Muromachi period it was caught in the wars and declined. In the Edo period the shogunate granted it an estate assessed at 1,420 koku, a koku being reckoned as the rice one person eats in a year, and the halls were rebuilt and put in order.

In 1689 the poet Matsuo Basho came here on the journey recorded as the Narrow Road to the Deep North, and wrote the verse for which the place is known in Japan: "the stillness, and the cry of the cicadas soaking into the rocks". A mound in the grounds marks the spot, and is named for the cicadas of the poem.

The way up is stone steps the whole distance, and the round trip takes about an hour and a half. Ordinary clothes and shoes are enough.

Along the way stand the main hall with its undying lamp, the founder's hall, four subordinate temples and, at the top, the inner sanctuary.