Koyasan & Around

Koyasan is a Buddhist monastic town founded in 816 in a basin 800 metres up Mount Koya, and it still runs to the rhythm of morning prayers. Okunoin cemetery leads two kilometres through towering cedars and 200,000 moss-covered memorials to the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi, who is said to sit there in eternal meditation. Pilgrims and travellers alike sleep in shukubo temple lodgings, eat shojin-ryori vegetarian cuisine prepared by monks, and rise before dawn for the fire rituals. Even the arrival — a cable car hauling you up from Gokurakubashi through the forest — feels like part of the ceremony. This section pairs the sacred mountain with the country at its feet: the peach and fig orchards of Kinokawa, Katsuragi's persimmon slopes and hilltop shrines, the quiet hamlets of Kimino, and Kudoyama — exile town of the samurai Sanada Yukimura, where the Choishi-michi pilgrim trail begins its climb — the fertile counterweight to Koyasan's austerity.