Emperor Hanazono abdicated in 1318 and took the tonsure -- the formal shaving of the head that marks the entry into monastic life -- in 1335. Seven years later, in 1342, he donated his imperial palace to found Myoshin-ji, inviting the Zen master Kanzan Egen to serve as the temple's first abbot. Kanzan Egen was the third patriarch in the Otokan lineage, one of the most influential streams of Rinzai Zen. The neighborhood surrounding the temple still bears the emperor's name: Hanazono. This imperial origin gave the temple its mountain name, Shobozan -- the Mountain of the True Dharma -- harkening back to a Chinese tradition in which Zen temples took the names of mountains even when they stood on flatland. Hanazono's gift launched what would become the dominant branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism.

In 1467, the Onin War swept through Kyoto with a fury that destroyed nearly every building in the complex. The civil war -- fought between rival samurai clans for control of the shogunate -- razed much of the city's religious architecture. But Myoshin-ji rose again. Under the leadership of Sekko-Soshin Zenji, the sixth patriarch, rebuilding began in the late fifteenth century and continued for roughly a hundred and fifty years. The structures that stand today -- the Sanmon gate from 1599, the Chokushimon from 1610, the Hatto lecture hall from 1656, the Dai-hojo abbot's quarters from 1654 -- date from this extended reconstruction period, spanning the late Muromachi through the early Edo era. Thirteen buildings within the complex hold the designation of Important Cultural Property of Japan, and the gardens are a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty and Historic Site.

Myoshin-ji is not one temple but many. More than forty sub-temples line its winding internal paths, each behind its own wall and gate. The layout defies intuition: the main buildings sit along a north-south axis in the southwest quadrant, but the paths curve and branch, and the high walls block all sense of direction. Visitors report becoming lost within minutes. A few sub-temples open year-round -- Taizo-in, renowned for its ink paintings and garden; Keishun-in, which offers meditation instruction in English; Shunkoin, with its rock garden and overnight lodging. Others open only seasonally: Torin-in in parts of January, July, and October; Daiho-in during the cherry blossom and autumn leaf seasons. Most remain closed to the public entirely, their gardens glimpsed only through gates left slightly ajar.

The Myoshin-ji school is the giant of Rinzai Zen. It encompasses roughly 3,400 temples across Japan -- approximately as many as all other thirteen Rinzai branches combined -- along with nineteen monasteries out of the forty total in the Rinzai tradition. Its approach to Zen practice sets it apart. Where other Rinzai schools use a standardized canon of koan -- the paradoxical riddles that masters pose to students as a tool for probing enlightenment -- Myoshin-ji masters tailor koan individually to each student's needs and background. This flexibility made the school accessible and contributed to its enormous growth over the centuries. Hanazono University, the Rinzai school's own institution of higher learning, was established by Myoshin-ji in 1872 and still operates near the complex.

Return to the bell. The Okikicho was cast in 698, during the Asuka period, making it older than the temple itself by more than six centuries. It survived the destruction of the Onin War, the fires that consumed surrounding neighborhoods, the earthquakes that have rattled Kyoto across thirteen hundred years. When it rings, the sound carries across the rooftops of the Hanazono district with a deep, sustained resonance that bronze-age metallurgy has never quite replicated. Temple bells in Japan are struck from the outside with a swinging wooden beam, producing a tone that decays slowly over thirty seconds or more. The Okikicho has been producing that tone longer than any other bell on Earth. It is designated a National Treasure of Japan -- a fitting title for an object that has been marking the passage of time since the late seventh century.