Hōkan-ji Temple (Yasaka Pagoda)

The Yasaka Pagoda rises forty-six meters above the surrounding wooden row houses, its five tiers of dark, weathered wood and heavy tiled roofs standing as a vertical anchor in the Higashiyama district. Known formally as Hōkan-ji, this structure is the last remaining monument of a temple complex once far larger in scale. While tradition attributes the original founding to Prince Shōtoku in the sixth century, the building that currently dominates the skyline dates to fourteen forty, when it was reconstructed by order of the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori.