Ginkaku-ji: Kyoto's Silver Pavilion

The Ginkaku was not the only pavilion in this villa/garden complex. There was another pavilion called the Togu-do or East-seeking Pavilion, this pavilion still exists near the Silver pavilion. Along with Yosimasa's personal living quarters, the Togu-do contains a tiny 9-foot-square tea room which is the prototype for all future tea rooms. Yoshimasa's tea master, Murata Shuko (1423-1503) is regarded as the first true tea master. Under his influence the tea ceremony began to take on the form which would be codified by 16th century tea masters. Some of the features of this pavilion, such an alcove (tokonama) for displaying hanging scrolls and flower arrangements and sliding screens of translucent rice paper (shoji), became standard features of both later tea huts and Japanese homes.

The villa/garden complex became a temple immediately following Yoshimasa's death and was named Jishoji but it is better known as Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion). The villa complex and it's gardens were severely damaged during the civil wars which followed Yoshimasa's death, but the Silver Pavilion, the Toguda and the pond survived. In 1585, an impoverished nobleman, named Konoe Sakahisha took possession of the silver pavilion and restored it. On his death, the garden and it's surviving pavilions came under the care of the Shokokuji Temple and in 1615 a major restoration was begun. The garden was so radically restored that only a few of the original stone arrangements survived unchanged.

The most famous features of the Ginkaku-ji probably date from after this restoration. These are the bed and cone of white quartz sand which lie to the north of the pavilion. The flat-topped cone is known as the Kogetsu-dai (this means 'opposite the moon platform'), it nearly two metres (6 feet) and 4.9 metres in diameter at it's base. The bed is a large flat mound of sand which is known as the Ginsadan (silver sand sea), it is about 75 centimeters (2 feet) high, the perimeter of this plateau is irregularly shaped and it spreads to the main hall of the temple compound (or hojo) which was built during the 1615 restoration. The surface of the Ginsadan is raked into strips so that areas of smooth, firmly beaten sand alternate with strips of furrowed sand. While it has always been compared the the Western Sea, a famous Chinese lake, there is no attempt to represent the undulating waves of the

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