Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the third shogun of the Muromachi period, was not a man who thought small. He would later build Kinkaku-ji -- the Golden Pavilion -- as his retirement villa, sheathing an entire building in gold leaf. But before that extravagance, he established Shokoku-ji. Construction of the central structures began in 1383, and by 1392 the full temple complex was dedicated with a banquet so lavish that witnesses compared it to an imperial event. Every great officer of the court and every military leader of the era attended. Yoshimitsu designated the Zen master Shunoku Myoha as founding abbot, but Myoha insisted the official honor go posthumously to his own teacher, Muso Soseki -- a gesture of humility formally recognized in 1385. For a brief period in 1392, Shokoku-ji was ranked first among the Kyoto Gozan, the five great Zen temples of the capital. It was the highest spiritual rank a temple could hold.

Shokoku-ji's history reads like a cycle of catastrophe and resurrection. The entire complex was destroyed by fire in 1394, just two years after its dedication. Yoshimitsu financed the reconstruction. The Onin War (1467-1477) -- the decade-long civil conflict that devastated Kyoto and ushered in the Sengoku period of warring states -- ravaged the temple again. After the Muromachi period ended, a succession of Japan's most powerful rulers stepped in to rebuild. Toyotomi Hideyoshi contributed. His son Hideyori financed the 1605 reconstruction of the Dharma Hall that still stands today -- now designated an Important Cultural Property as the oldest surviving example of its architectural type in the country. Tokugawa Ieyasu donated the Sanmon, the ceremonial Mountain Gate, in 1609. Emperor Go-Mizunoo gave an imperial palace building to serve as the Kaisando, the Founder's Hall. Then the great Kyoto conflagration of 1788 swept through and destroyed nearly everything except that 17th-century Dharma Hall.

What surprises many visitors is that Shokoku-ji is the administrative parent of two of Japan's most famous sites. Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion that draws millions of tourists each year, is technically a sub-temple of Shokoku-ji. So is Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion, built by Yoshimitsu's grandson Ashikaga Yoshimasa. Together with over ninety other affiliated temples, they form the Shokoku-ji branch of Rinzai Zen -- one of fourteen autonomous lineages of the Rinzai school. The temple serves as the administrative headquarters for this entire network. Within its grounds, the Jotenkaku Museum houses art and cultural artifacts accumulated over six centuries, including works connected to the painter Ito Jakuchu, who spent much of his artistic life associated with Shokoku-ji. The museum is a quiet counterpoint to the crowds that pack the Golden Pavilion a few kilometers away.

The Dharma Hall remains the temple's centerpiece and its most visceral experience. The dragon painted across the ceiling is not merely decorative. In Buddhist symbolism, the dragon represents the power of dharma -- Buddhist law and teaching -- descending like rain upon all living beings. The acoustic phenomenon that occurs when a visitor claps beneath the painting is an accident of architecture: the slightly domed ceiling and flat stone floor create a natural reverberation chamber that stretches a single sharp sound into a sustained, rolling echo. But to the monks who have practiced here for centuries, there is nothing accidental about it. The thunder of the dragon is the voice of the dharma itself, answering anyone who calls. Shokoku-ji sits in northern Kyoto between the Imperial Palace and Doshisha University, a working Zen headquarters in the middle of a modern city, still answering after more than six hundred years.