Kukai chose this location deliberately. The eight peaks surrounding the high plain resemble, in Buddhist cosmology, the petals of a lotus flower -- the very shape of the sacred mandala. He had studied esoteric Buddhist practices in China and returned to Japan with a vision for a remote mountain center dedicated to Shingon teachings. Emperor Saga granted him the site in 816, and by 819 Kukai had begun construction of what would become Kongobu-ji, the head temple of Shingon Buddhism. At the heart of the settlement stands the Danjo Garan, the original sacred complex housing the Konpon Daito -- a vermillion pagoda standing 48.5 meters tall that Shingon doctrine holds as the central point of a mandala covering all of Japan. The massive Daimon gate, flanked by fierce Kongo warrior statues, marks the main entrance. Pilgrims have climbed to it for centuries along the Choishi-michi trail, marked by stone pillars set every 109 meters.

The warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Kongobu-ji's main hall in memory of his mother, originally naming it Seigan-ji before it was renamed during the Meiji Era. The Tokugawa shoguns left their mark too: a mausoleum constructed by the third shogun Iemitsu took ten years to build and enshrines the first shogun Ieyasu on the right and the second, Hidetada, on the left, decorated with elaborate carvings and brass fittings characteristic of the Edo period. Walk through the Okunoin cemetery -- the largest in Japan, with over 200,000 graves -- and you pass the tombs of the Shimazu clan, feudal lords, samurai, and ordinary pilgrims alike. Corporate Japan has staked its claim here too: modern memorial stones erected by companies stand alongside centuries-old moss-covered monuments. The cemetery even contains a grave marker featuring a Saturn V rocket, placed by the aerospace manufacturer ShinMaywa, and one dedicated to termites by the Japan Termite Control Association.

The path through Okunoin's towering cedar forest ends at the Toro-do, the Hall of Lamps, built directly before Kukai's mausoleum. Inside, over ten thousand lanterns donated by pilgrims and worshippers burn without ceasing. Two of these flames are said to have been kept alive for more than 900 years -- one lit by a poor woman who sold her hair to afford the offering, the other by Emperor Shirakawa. At night, the lit pathway through the cemetery transforms the forest into something otherworldly: stone statues of Jizo, the bodhisattva who protects travelers and children, stand draped in small red bibs among the moss-covered tombs. The ancient cryptomeria and cypress trees, some with planting records dating back to 1012, form a canopy that filters what little light reaches through. Photography is forbidden near the mausoleum itself, and the atmosphere enforces a hush that even large groups of visitors seem unable to break.

What makes Mount Koya unlike any other religious site in Japan is that visitors are not merely tolerated -- they are expected. Of the 120 temples on the mountain, many operate as shukubo, temple lodgings that provide traditional accommodation with tatami rooms, vegetarian Buddhist cuisine for dinner and breakfast, and an invitation to attend morning prayers. Guests wake before dawn to the sound of chanting and sit in candlelit halls while monks perform rituals unchanged for centuries. The town itself feels suspended between its medieval origins and modern accessibility: a cable car from Gokurakubashi Station -- whose name means "Paradise Bridge" -- whisks visitors from the base to the summit in five minutes, and the full journey from Osaka's Namba Station takes only ninety minutes by express train. UNESCO recognized the mountain's extraordinary significance in 2004, designating Kongobu-ji and the surrounding pilgrimage routes as part of the World Heritage Site "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range."

Mount Koya exists at an intersection that few places can claim: it is simultaneously a functioning religious headquarters, a living town, a pilgrimage destination, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a cemetery of staggering scale. The Konpon Daito pagoda and Okunoin mausoleum form a spiritual axis across the settlement, and the eight surrounding peaks hold the whole plateau in a kind of geographic embrace. Weekend traffic on the mountain roads can be heavy, an oddly mundane detail for a place so steeped in the sacred. But weekday mornings reward the patient traveler -- the drive through mountain forest gives way to monastery-lined streets, the scent of incense in the air, and the knowledge that somewhere in the forest beyond the Hall of Lamps, monks are preparing yet another meal for a man who, by their reckoning, has been meditating for nearly 1,200 years and has no intention of stopping.