Mount Hiei

Mount Hiei rises northeast of Kyoto, the direction held to be the demon gate through which misfortune entered the capital. At its eastern foot stands Hiyoshi Taisha, whose Sannō Gongen faith fused the mountain's Shintō cult with Buddhism.

In 788 the monk Saichō founded Enryaku-ji on the summit with the backing of Emperor Kanmu, and it became the headquarters of the Tendai sect: Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen and Nichiren studied there before founding their own schools. At the temple's height its warrior monks more than forty times carried Hiyoshi's portable shrine into Kyoto to enforce their demands.

In 1571 Oda Nobunaga stormed the mountain, burned the halls and slaughtered the monks, ending that power; Toyotomi Hideyoshi rebuilt the shrine from 1586, and the Tokugawa shoguns restored Enryaku-ji, its main hall rising again in 1642.