Yoshimitsu Builds Kitayama Palace

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu transferred the shogunal office to his son Yoshimochi in 1394 and took Buddhist vows the following year. He continued to direct government. In 1397 he acquired the former Saionji estate at Kitayama, north of Kyoto, retained parts of its earlier landscape and began a new residential and ceremonial complex. He moved there in 1398.

The palace contained residences, religious halls and a garden arranged around a pond. Its three-story relic hall, later known as the Golden Pavilion, combined spaces for worship with architectural forms associated with aristocratic residences and Zen Buddhism. Yoshimitsu conducted government and received high-ranking visitors at Kitayama; Emperor Go-Komatsu’s visit in 1408 gave the complex a conspicuous place in court ceremonial life.

Yoshimitsu died that year, but his wife Hino Yasuko remained at Kitayama until her death in 1419. Parts of the palace were then dismantled and transferred to other temples. By 1422 at the latest, Yoshimochi had made the relic hall the center of Rokuonji, naming the already deceased Musō Soseki its honorary founder. Much of the complex subsequently burned in the Ōnin War. The pavilion survived until the 1950 fire; the building seen today is its 1955 reconstruction.