Jiko-in was not built for a congregation. It was built for grief, for tea, and for contemplation. In 1663, Katagiri Sadamasa, the second daimyo of Koizumi Domain, constructed the temple as a bodaiji -- a memorial temple -- for his deceased father, Katagiri Sadataka. The temple's very name comes from his father's dharma name: Jikoin-den Setsutei Soritsu Koji. But Sadamasa was no ordinary feudal lord. Known widely by his tea name Sekishu, he had founded the Sekishu-ryu school of the Japanese tea ceremony and served as tea instructor to the fourth Tokugawa shogun, Ietsuna. His style, refined and austere, became the dominant aesthetic among Japan's ruling warrior class. When he designed Jiko-in, he brought that same sensibility to every surface, every sightline, every carefully considered measurement. The 185th abbot of Daitoku-ji served as its founding priest, connecting this small hilltop retreat to one of Kyoto's most prestigious Zen monasteries.

The entry gate at Jiko-in has its own story of survival. It once stood at Settsu Ibaraki Castle, where Sadamasa was born. When the Tokugawa shogunate enforced its famous One Castle per Province edict -- a measure to consolidate power by dismantling redundant fortifications -- Ibaraki Castle was abolished. Rather than let the gate vanish into rubble, Sadamasa salvaged the structure and reinstalled it at his new temple. Walking through it today, you pass through a piece of his birthplace to enter the place he built for his father's memory. The path beyond the gate climbs gently through a middle garden before reaching the main buildings, a quiet progression that shifts your awareness from the outside world to the contemplative space within.

The shoin, Jiko-in's central building and main hall, is designated a National Important Cultural Property. From the outside, it looks like a farmhouse -- thatch roof, hipped gables, tiled eaves -- but this modesty is deliberate. Inside, the upper room stretches across thirteen tatami mats and includes a tokonoma alcove, yet it lacks nageshi railings, giving the space a clean, unadorned quality. On the north side sits a three-tatami-mat tea room. Every dimension was calculated for the seated position. The low ceilings and lintels do not feel oppressive; they feel protective, drawing the eye outward through the open walls to the garden and the basin beyond. The water basins -- a tsukubai at the tea room and three chozubachi along the shoin -- were handcrafted by Sekishu himself, and all carry the same Important Cultural Property designation as the building they serve.

In 1671, eight years after the temple's founding, Sadamasa added a dedicated chashitsu -- a tea ceremony room -- to the northeast corner of the shoin. This intimate space, also a National Important Cultural Property, is where Sekishu's aesthetic philosophy reaches its most concentrated expression. The interior consists of a two-tatami-mat daime platform with a large lattice window. The nijiriguchi, the small crawl-through entrance that forces even the most powerful guest to humble themselves, opens to the right. The tokonoma alcove sits immediately beside the entrance, far from the guest seat, in what is called a host's alcove arrangement. Including the two-tatami waiting room separated by sliding doors, the entire space measures just four tatami mats -- the exact layout Sekishu had built in his Kyoto mansion. The room's most cherished detail is a curved toko-bashira pillar with its oak bark still attached, a natural imperfection that Sekishu reportedly prized above all the room's other elements.

Jiko-in sits 1.4 kilometers northwest of Yamato-Koizumi Station on the JR West Kansai Main Line, about a twenty-minute walk. It receives far fewer visitors than the famous temples of neighboring Nara, and that relative obscurity is part of its character. This is not a place of monumental scale or gilded splendor. It belongs to the Daitoku-ji branch of Rinzai Zen, and its honzon is a statue of Shaka Nyorai, the historical Buddha. The temple's mountain name, Entsuzan, means something close to the mountain of perfect penetration. More than three and a half centuries after Sekishu laid out its rooms and gardens, Jiko-in still functions exactly as he intended: as a place where the act of sitting quietly and looking outward becomes, itself, a form of practice.