The Junipers of Kenchoji

Before the temple there was an execution ground here, and the valley was called Hell Valley. Hojo Tokiyori, who governed Japan as regent and wanted to do it through Buddhism, put a great temple on the site in 1253 and brought the monk Rankei Doryu from Song China to open it; by 1386 Kenchoji was ranked first of Kamakura's five great Zen temples. It has the Zen layout, outer gate and mountain gate and buddha hall and dharma hall in one straight line, and along the path between the gate and the buddha hall a row of old junipers stands on both sides. Temple tradition says Rankei brought the seed with him from China and planted them. The thickest is the middle one of three on the left, 6.5 metres round and 13 metres tall, throwing limbs out sideways. What makes the tradition worth repeating is what happened to everything around them: the halls burned down repeatedly over the centuries and the junipers did not, and the buddha hall standing there now is not even originally Kamakura's. It was the mausoleum of the second Tokugawa shogun's wife, moved here from Shiba in Edo in 1647.