高野山 別格本山 一乗院

The modern history of Ichijoin begins in the wake of a devastating fire in 1932. With almost everything reduced to ashes, the temple’s revival started from a modest, frugal wooden extension built in front of the surviving storehouse. When rebuilding the Main Hall, a group of Sumo wrestlers was invited to perform shiko (traditional foot-stomping) to powerfully compact and solidify the earth beneath it. In 1944, midway through the reconstruction, the head priest passed away. He and his wife had no children, and their adopted successor (the father of the current head priest) had been drafted into the military and was subsequently trapped in a Siberian labor camp. In this desperate situation, the late priest’s wife—a Buddhist nun—became the sole guardian of the temple. Bearing the heavy responsibility of rebuilding, she was extraordinarily strict with money. Locals joked that "she ate melons until only the net remained." Yet, to the master carpenter of "Daihiko-gumi," a prestigious lineage of Koyasan shrine carpenters dating back to the Edo period, she showed absolute trust. It is said she never once rejected his architectural proposals. She sacrificed her own comforts, but never compromised on the temple's reconstruction. Amidst leading this monumental revival, she prayed desperately, day and night, for the safe return of her young adopted son from the frozen lands of Siberia. Guided by her tenacious, almost obsessive prayers, the young successor would eventually achieve a miraculous survival and return to Koyasan.

Her prayers were answered when the young adopted successor survived Siberia and miraculously returned to Koyasan. He soon married a daughter from another local temple, one of the first generation of women born on the sacred mountain. Together, this trio—the strict nun, the returned priest, and his new wife—collaborated with the Daihiko-gumi carpenters to build the current Honkan, proudly known then as the "Shinzo" (The New Annex). Defying the traditional use of removable fusuma (sliding paper doors), they made the highly controversial decision to build fully walled private rooms. Although locals gossiped that they were building "lewd rooms for couples," their visionary foresight perfectly anticipated the modern global standards of privacy and luxury. Answering the nun's absolute trust, the master carpenters crowned these innovative spaces with magnificent, hand-carved wooden ranma (transoms).

The legacy born from the first generation's prayers and the second generation's innovation has now reached a miraculous intersection. Today, these suites have been stunningly reborn through a fateful collaboration: the current Head Priest (the grandson of the head priest from two generations ago) and the current president of Daihiko-gumi, a first-class architect (the grandson of the master carpenter from that time). Originally built by their grandparents and carefully preserved by their fathers, this space has been reimagined by the third generation to offer uncompromising modern comfort. The solid walls that once caused a stir now provide profound tranquility. As you gaze up at the exquisite, hand-carved wooden ranma preserved from that post-war era, you are not merely looking at the past. You are breathing inside an ongoing epic—a masterpiece woven by two lineages across three generations. Welcome to The Reimagined Pavilion - Honkan.