Nanshu-ji began in August 1526 as a modest Zen hermitage. In 1557, the warlord Miyoshi Nagayoshi -- then the most powerful figure in the region from his seat at Iimoriyama Castle in Kawachi Province -- expanded it into a proper temple to honor his deceased father, Miyoshi Motonaga. The temple gained prestige rapidly: by 1573, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki designated it one of the Jissetsu temples under the Five Mountain System, the official hierarchy of Zen institutions under the Ashikaga shogunate. Then destruction arrived, as it repeatedly would. Matsunaga Hisahide burned Nanshu-ji in 1574 during his struggle against Oda Nobunaga. It was rebuilt, only to burn again in 1615 during the Osaka Summer Campaign. The noted Zen prelate Takuan Soho reconstructed it in 1619 under Tokugawa Shogunate patronage, relocating it to its present site. American bombs hit it again on July 10, 1945, destroying the Kaisan-do, Hojo, and Tosho-gu shrine. Yet three structures survived: the Main Hall, built in 1654; the Sanmon gate, built in 1647; and the elegant Karamon gate. All three are now designated National Important Cultural Properties.

Outside the abbot's chamber lies a dry landscape garden attributed to the temple's 1619 reconstruction by Takuan Soho and laid out by the tea master and warrior Furuta Oribe. The garden uses the natural rise of the terrain to create the illusion of a waterfall frozen in stone, with an 'upstream' bridge of rock spanning a cascade that has never held water. In the foreground, a bed of white stones -- raked into patterns suggesting flowing currents -- draws the eye toward a central arrangement of upright rocks that anchor the composition. The effect is one of motion held perfectly still, a landscape designed not to be walked through but contemplated from a seated position on the veranda. This garden is designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty, one of a small number of gardens in all of Japan to hold this distinction.

Nanshu-ji's cemetery reads like a who's who of the Japanese tea ceremony. Sen no Rikyu, the figure most responsible for shaping the austere aesthetic of wabi-cha tea, lived for many years in Sakai. Although his official grave sits at Jukoin temple within the Daitoku-ji compound in Kyoto, he has a second resting place here at Nanshu-ji. Beside him lie Takeno Joo, who was Rikyu's teacher and a wealthy Sakai merchant, and Tsuda Sogyu, another merchant-turned-tea-master who helped codify the practice. The major tea schools that descend from Rikyu's lineage -- the Omotesenke, Urasenke, and Mushakojisenke -- all maintain tombs in this cemetery. Nanshu-ji also serves as the bodaiji, or ancestral temple, of the Miyoshi clan, the Sengoku-era warlords who built it. And tucked among the gravestones of warriors and tea masters is the tomb of Utagawa Yoshitaki, an ukiyo-e artist celebrated for his vivid depictions of kabuki actors.

The conspiracy theory about Ieyasu's death at Nanshu-ji has considerable staying power despite its logical gaps. The story claims that during the summer campaign of 1615, Sanada Yukimura's forces pushed Ieyasu into a panicked retreat from Osaka, during which the loyalist warrior Goto Matabe thrust a spear through the shogun's palanquin. Ieyasu's retainers supposedly smuggled his body to Nanshu-ji and hid it beneath the Kaisan-do. Historians counter that the temple had already been destroyed in the fighting and that Goto Matabe died in battle on June 2, 1615, before the alleged assassination took place. Nonetheless, in 1967, Keijiro Miki -- a master of the Hokushin Itto-ryu school of swordsmanship and himself a descendant of the Mito branch of the Tokugawa clan -- erected a stone monument reading 'Tosho-gu Tokugawa Ieyasu Tomb' on the site where the temple's Tosho-gu shrine once stood. The monument still draws visitors who enjoy a good historical mystery, even one that the evidence does not support.