Zojoji Temple

Turn around. Behind the ancient temple gate, Tokyo Tower rises in vivid orange and white. It is one of the most surreal juxtapositions in the city — a four-hundred-year-old gate to a Tokugawa burial ground with a nineteen fifties broadcasting tower looming directly behind it. And underneath your feet, six shoguns are buried.

Zojoji is the final resting place of six Tokugawa shoguns and five of their wives, including Princess Kazunomiya. In fifteen ninety-eight, Tokugawa Ieyasu — the man who unified Japan — chose this as his family temple. At its peak, the complex was enormous: forty-eight sub-temples, a hundred and fifty schools, and three thousand resident priests spread across eight hundred and twenty-six thousand square metres. It was a city within a city.

The gate you pass through — the Sangedatsu-mon — was built in sixteen twenty-two. That makes it the oldest wooden building in Tokyo. And here is what makes it truly remarkable: it is the only original structure on this entire site that survived the Second World War. Everything else was destroyed in the firebombing and rebuilt afterwards. This single gate has stood here for over four hundred years while everything around it burned and was remade.

The temple itself was originally built in thirteen ninety-three, making it over six hundred years old as an institution even though most of its buildings are postwar reconstructions. In the grounds, you will find rows of small stone Jizo statues dressed in red knitted caps and bibs, placed by parents who have lost children. The statues represent unborn or deceased children, and the handmade clothing is an act of care that continues beyond death. It is one of the most quietly moving sights in Tokyo.