A Night Among the Cedars of Koyasan

In 816 the monk Kukai, known after his death as Kobo Daishi, was granted a flat basin high in the Kii mountains and founded the monastic town that became Koyasan. Twelve centuries later it is still exactly that: more than a hundred working temples, a single main street, a cable car hauling pilgrims up from the valley, and cedar forest closing in on every side. About fifty of them take guests. Staying in a shukubo means tatami, sliding paper doors, a futon laid out while you are at dinner, and shojin ryori — the monks' vegetarian cuisine, built on sesame tofu, mountain vegetables, pickles and koya-dofu, freeze-dried in the winter air since the middle ages.

The heart of the mountain is Okunoin, a two-kilometre avenue of graves under cedars that have been growing since before Europe had printing. Two hundred thousand memorials line it: warlords who spent their lives fighting each other now share a slope, alongside merchants, a rocket-shaped monument raised by an aerospace company and stone Jizo in red bibs. At the far end, past the Hall of Lamps and its ten thousand burning lanterns, Kobo Daishi is held to be not dead but in eternal meditation, and monks still carry him two meals a day. Walk it at night, when the lanterns are the only light.

By day, the Danjo Garan complex answers with colour: the vermilion Konpon Daito pagoda, 48.5 metres of it, glowing against black pines. Kongobuji, the head temple, keeps Japan's largest rock garden, its granite raked into two dragons emerging from cloud. Rise at six for gongyo chanting, or for the goma fire ritual where cedar sticks carrying written wishes are fed into flame. Autumn sets the whole basin alight in red; winter muffles it in snow. Few places in Japan repay a slow overnight so completely.