Map: GSI Japan Yakushi-ji joins an imperial foundation vow at Fujiwara-kyō to one of Nara's clearest modern programs of historical reconstruction. Emperor Tenmu vowed the temple in 680 for the recovery of his consort, the future Empress Jitō, and Jitō continued the project after his death. The institution moved to Heijō-kyō in 718. At the current precinct, the eighth-century East Pagoda and ancient sculptural works stand beside a West Pagoda, Main Hall, Lecture Hall, gates, and refectory reconstructed through a twentieth- and twenty-first-century campaign supported by sutra copying. The contrast is not a flaw: it makes survival, loss, archaeology, devotion, and reconstruction unusually legible.
