The monk Ennin, known posthumously as Jikaku Daishi, founded Motsuji in 850 on what was then a genuine frontier. To the south lay Yamato Japan with its court culture and Buddhist institutions. To the north stretched the territory of the Emishi, the indigenous people of the Tohoku region of northern Honshu. Hiraizumi sat at the boundary between these worlds, and for three centuries it would develop a culture that absorbed influences from both -- a sophistication that would astonish later visitors expecting to find only wilderness. The temple Ennin established was a foothold for Tendai Buddhism on the edge of the known world.

In the mid-12th century, Fujiwara no Motohira, the second lord of the Northern Fujiwara clan, transformed Motsuji into something extraordinary. He built a temple called Enryu-ji whose main hall contained a monumental statue of Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of Healing, flanked by statues of the Twelve Divine Generals sculpted by the master Unkei with crystal eyes -- an innovation at the time. The hall blazed with color: precious wood, gold, silver, and jewels decorated every surface. Lecture halls, a circumambulation hall, a two-story main gate, a bell tower, and a sutra repository surrounded it. Once Enryu-ji was finished, Motohira ordered an almost exact copy built beside it, called Kasho-ji. He did not live to see it completed; that task fell to his son Hidehira. At its peak, Motsuji's 40 buildings and up to 500 subsidiary chapels rivaled nearby Chuson-ji in splendor.

After the Northern Fujiwara clan fell to Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1189, Hiraizumi's buildings burned one by one -- through conflict, through accident, through neglect. By 1226, nothing stood. The temple was rebuilt during the Edo period, but the current structures sit on different foundations and bear no relation to the originals. What does survive is the Pure Land garden. The large pond with its two islands, four peninsulas, and carefully composed shoreline of beaches and rugged rocks remains preserved much as it appeared 800 years ago. Its designer, unknown by name, clearly knew the Sakuteiki, the 11th-century treatise on garden construction. Cherry trees, irises, lotus, bush clover, and maples ring the water, each marking a different season. The garden was designed as a physical manifestation of the Buddhist Pure Land paradise -- heaven made visible on earth.

Motsuji is no museum piece. Throughout the year, festivals bring the grounds to life in ways that connect directly to the Fujiwara era. The Ennen no Mai, a sacred dance preserved from medieval times, is performed during both the Spring Fujiwara Festival in early May and the Autumn Fujiwara Festival in November. The Ayame Matsuri, or Iris Festival, runs from late June into July when the garden's irises bloom in dense purple carpets along the pond's edge. August brings the Daimonji Matsuri, a bonfire festival marking the end of Obon, when the spirits of the dead return home. The temple holds dual status as a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special National Historic Site -- a rare double designation recognizing both its aesthetic perfection and its historical significance.