Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the peasant who unified Japan, wanted Kyoto to have a Great Buddha that would surpass the famous Daibutsu at Nara. He boasted that he would finish the project in half the time it took Emperor Shomu in the eighth century -- and he nearly made good on the claim. Construction began in 1588 with the approval of Emperor Go-Yozei, and architects Nakamura Masakiyo and Heinouchi Yoshimasa oversaw the massive project in the area where the Kyoto National Museum now stands. Hideyoshi's ambition extended to the materials themselves: his infamous Sword Hunt edict of 1588 required all non-samurai to surrender their weapons, and the regime explained that the confiscated metal -- swords, spears, firearms -- would be melted down into nails and clamps for the Buddha statue. Disarmament disguised as piety. By 1589, the temple was dedicated in a ceremony attended by a thousand priests, and Hideyoshi had his colossus.

The Great Buddha of Kyoto never stayed standing for long. An earthquake in 1596 destroyed both the statue and the great hall that housed it. A fire in 1602, caused by careless workmen, consumed the rebuilt image and its structure. Hideyoshi's son Toyotomi Hideyori took up his father's cause in 1610, commissioning a new bronze Buddha and ordering a massive bell to accompany it. The bell was cast successfully in 1614, but Ieyasu -- by now the de facto ruler of Japan and deeply suspicious of Toyotomi loyalists -- seized on the bell's inscription as an insult. He forbade the dedication ceremonies and used the incident to justify the Siege of Osaka, the campaign that would annihilate the Toyotomi clan. The bell inscription was, as contemporary observers noted, a mere pretext. Ieyasu understood that his hold on power could never be secure while Hideyori lived.

The cycle of ruin continued long after the Toyotomi-Tokugawa conflict ended. A powerful earthquake in 1662 destroyed the temple, the great statue, and the hall for the third time. Some accounts say Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna ordered the bronze remnants melted down and coined into currency -- a final indignity for Hideyoshi's grand vision. Rebuilding efforts between 1664 and 1667 produced a more modest gilt wooden Buddha to replace the lost bronze. Lightning struck the temple in 1775, though the damage was contained. In 1845, a wealthy patron from Owari province donated a gigantic wooden figure that stood for over a century before the image and its reconstructed hall were destroyed by fire yet again. Each rebuilding was smaller than the last, the temple's footprint shrinking with every catastrophe, as though the site were slowly surrendering its hold on grandeur.

Today Hoko-ji is a quiet temple in eastern Kyoto, a fraction of its original scale. The grounds where Hideyoshi once assembled a thousand priests from eight Buddhist sects for a mass memorial service now occupy a modest plot near the Kyoto National Museum. But the great bronze bell from 1614 survives, and it remains one of the most historically significant objects in the city. Visitors can still examine the inscription that Ieyasu used to justify his war -- the characters kokka anko clearly visible on the weathered bronze. The bell is a reminder that in Japanese history, words carved in metal could carry as much destructive force as the swords that were melted to build the temple in the first place. It is also a monument to the stubbornness of Kyoto itself, a city that has rebuilt around its wounds for more than a millennium.