Negoroji (Iwade)

Negoroji was, at its height in the sixteenth century, a monastic complex of some two thousand buildings with an armed force of thousands of warrior monks who had adopted matchlock firearms early and used them well. In 1585 Toyotomi Hideyoshi destroyed it. Almost everything burned.

The Daito survived. It is a multi-storey pagoda in the tahoto form, finished in 1547, more than forty metres high and by a wide margin the largest of its kind in Japan — and it is the only tahoto in the country whose interior is open to visitors, so you can stand inside the drum and look at the structure. It is a National Treasure and it still carries bullet scars from the 1585 assault. The grounds are large, wooded and quiet, and admission to the main precinct is ¥500.