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A nearly 400-year-old Kyoto temple ordinarily closed to public is accepting visitors this summer

Casey Baseel Jun 27, 2025
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A rare chance to see this temple-within-a-temple that’s off the beaten tourist track.

Kyoto is one of Japan’s top travel destinations, and with good reason, as the city boasts the densest distribution of historically significant temples in the whole country. As a matter of fact, you can find temples inside temples at Kyoto’s Myoshinji.

Founded in 1337 and located in northwestern Kyoto, Myoshinjji is a Zen temple that’s the head temple of the Rinzai sect, and also a complex that contains more than 40 sub-temples. Most of these sub-temples are closed to the public, but this summer Tenkyuin Temple is making an exception, and we took part in a press tour (which also gave us permission to photograph on the premises) to get a rare look at this ordinarily off-limits part of Kyoto.

▼ Myoshinji

Myoshinji is about a five-minute walk from Hanazono Station on JR/Japan Railway Company’s Sagano Line. Though many of Kyoto’s more famous temples are packed with tourists these days, Myoshinji is slightly removed from the city center, making the crowds smaller and the atmosphere more relaxed than at a lot of other Kyoto sightseeing spots we’ve been to recently.

▼ It was peaceful enough that we had time to stop and smell the enticing aroma of the gardenias that were blooming on the temple grounds.

Tenkyuin Temple was built in 1631, with its construction spearheaded by Lady Tenkyuin, the daughter of samurai lord Ikeda Terumasa, who ruled over the Himeji domain (part of present-day Hyogo Prefecture).

Among the design points Lady Tenkyuin decided on was commissioning a set of exquisite wall/sliding doorpaintings for the abbot’s chambers.

She selected two of the most renowned artists of the day, Kano Sanraku and his son-in-law, Kano Sansetsu. With Sanraku having been born in 1559 and Sansetsu in 1590, the pair’s work represents not only a bridge between generations, but also a transitionary period in Japanese art history as the centuries-long civil war of the Sengoku Period gave way to the stability of the Edo Period, which began at the start of the 1600s.

Because of their historical value, a number of the Kanos’ Tenkyuin paintings are now kept and displayed at the Kyoto National Museum, in an environment where the temperature and humidity can be more tightly controlled, and so some of the panels seen inside Tenkyuin are actually extremely high-quality reproductions by Canon. There are original Kano paintings mixed in among the sections pictured below, however.

Not all of Tenkyui’s beauty is contained within its walls, though, as it also has a lovely garden.

The conventional wisdom says that you should avoid traveling in Japan in June, when the weather is hot and humid in most of the country, and especially so in Kyoto. If you can bear with the steamy conditions, though, this can be an excellent time for visiting gardens, as the misty skies can sometimes give the greenery and floral colors a moist, shimmery look.

You don’t have to go to Tenkyuin during the June rainy season, though, as this year it’ll be open to visitors from June 7 all the way through August 31. Admission is priced at 2,500 yen (US$17.25) and prior reservations are required, and can be made online here through JR Central’s EX ticketing service.

Reference: Myoshinji official website, JR Sou Da Kyoto Ikou tourism website (1, 2), Kyoto National Museum
Photos marked JR東海 provided by JR Central
All other photos ©SoraNews24
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