Ikoji Temple

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

SesshuIkojitemple gardenMasudaink painter

Photo: Sengoku40 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original

A visit to Ikoji Temple is easy to underplan — bring more time, and less certainty about what you'll find, than you'd expect.

Sesshu is the most important ink painter Japan produced, and he spent part of his later life in Masuda, at the western end of Shimane, as head priest of the temples here. He designed gardens as well as painting, and the one at Ikoji is his — laid out during the Bunmei era, in the late fifteenth century, while he was the temple's fifth abbot.

It is a pond garden meant to be viewed from the hall with a partial stroll route, built on the auspicious crane-and-turtle scheme: a crane-shaped pond with a turtle island set in it, a form intended to signify long life. What makes the visit is that it is still a working temple in a small city rather than a managed attraction, so you sit on the boards and look at a five-hundred-year-old composition with nobody else in the room. A weeping cherry frames it in mid-March, azaleas take over in May, and a large maple carries the autumn.

What to know before you go

Access hours

8:30 AM – 5:00 PM (to 5:30 PM in summer)

Closed: Open year-round

When to go

Mid-March for the weeping cherry | May for azaleas | November for the maple

Fee

¥500 general | ¥300 high school students | Free for elementary and junior high school students

Time to allow

45–60 minutes | 2–3 hours with Manpukuji

Access route

Getting there in detail

Masuda. Roughly by car or taxi from JR Masuda Station. Admission ¥500 general and ¥300 for high school students; elementary and junior high school students free. Group rates apply for 20 or more.

What to bring

**Sit down and look from the hall.** The garden is a pond-viewing composition designed to be read from a fixed position on the temple boards. Walking the stroll route first and never sitting is the way to miss the design entirely. **Do Manpukuji as well.** Sesshu also made the garden at Manpukuji, a short distance away in the same city, and it is a different kind of composition. The two together are the reason to come to Masuda at all, and they take an easy half-day. **Mid-March is the weeping cherry.** The single weeping cherry over the garden is the best-known image of the place and is up for roughly a fortnight. Azaleas follow in May and the maple turns in November — there is no dead season, but those three are the peaks. **Masuda is further west than people expect.** It is about two hours from Izumo by train and closer to Yamaguchi than to Matsue. Treat it as a stop on the way along the Sanin coast rather than a day trip. **No closing days.** Unusually for a temple with a paid garden, it is open every day of the year, which makes it a reliable fallback when museums in the region are shut on Mondays and Tuesdays.

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