Koyasan

The monastery began with a grant of land. In 816 the emperor Saga gave the plateau to Kukai, the monk known after his death as Kobo Daishi, who had returned from study in Tang China with the teachings of esoteric Buddhism and wanted a mountain retreat far from the capital. Local legend has it that the deities of the Niu shrine in the valley below led him to the site, a ring of eight peaks around a level basin. Building began at the Garan in 819, and Kukai entered his mausoleum at Okunoin in 835; Shingon tradition holds that he did not die but sits there in eternal meditation, awaiting the future Buddha.

Belief in that presence made Okunoin the most sought-after burial ground in Japan. Emperors, warlords, poets and, later, companies had memorials raised among the cedars, including the graves of enemies lying within sight of each other. The monastery grew rich on donations and, by the medieval period, on its own estates and armed men, and at its height it counted many hundreds of temples.

Fire destroyed much of it repeatedly — the Konpon Daito pagoda has burned and been rebuilt several times — and in 1581 Oda Nobunaga's forces threatened the mountain before his death spared it. The Meiji government stripped the monastery of land and forced the separation of Shinto and Buddhist worship, and the ban that had kept women off the plateau was given up in the Meiji period, formally in 1906. In 2004 Koyasan and its pilgrim roads were inscribed by UNESCO with the other sacred sites of the Kii Mountain Range, and temple lodging has since become the mountain's main contact with the outside world.

Life here runs on the monastic day. Bells sound before dawn, monks file into halls for morning service, and the goma fire ritual — in which wooden sticks carrying written wishes are burned before a flaming altar while a priest chants — is performed at several temples. Guests at a shukubo, a temple lodging, sleep on futons in tatami rooms, eat what the monks eat, and are welcome, though not obliged, to attend the service.

The mountain's social character is unusual: a town of around three thousand people in which a large share of adults are clergy, temple staff or work in related trades, with a university of Shingon studies and its own school run for the community. Families have served particular temples for generations, and the funeral and memorial business that fills Okunoin sustains stonemasons and undertakers as well as priests.

Ritual objects are made and sold here — incense, rosaries, brocade, lacquer — and the mountain keeps a strong calendar of observances, from the June ceremonies for Kukai to the candle-lit Obon nights in August and the initiation rites open to lay people. Visitors are asked to behave as pilgrims do: bowing at the bridge that marks the entrance to the cemetery, walking quietly, and remembering that the graves are tended by families, not preserved as scenery.

About three thousand people live in the town of Koya, which covers a large area of forest and valley but is concentrated on the plateau. The population has fallen steadily, as it has across rural Wakayama, and the primary school and shops serve a community that empties in winter and fills with visitors in the autumn weeks.

Almost the whole economy is religious. Around 120 temples remain, many of them taking overnight guests, and their kitchens, gardens and offices employ much of the working population. Around them are the stone carvers, Buddhist goods shops, bus drivers and cable-car staff, the university, and a small amount of forestry in the surrounding cedar plantations. Tourism revenue has grown sharply since the UNESCO listing, which has brought income, crowding on the autumn weekends and a debate about how far a monastery should go to accommodate guests.

The rhythm is early and quiet. Shops shut in the late afternoon, temple gates close at dusk, dinner is eaten before seven and the settlement goes dark, so that the only movement after nightfall is on the lit path through the cemetery. The mountain's isolation is real: hospitals, high schools and supermarkets are down in the valley, the road up is narrow and snowbound in winter, and residents plan around the cable car much as elsewhere people plan around a bus.

Food on the mountain is monastic. Shojin ryori, the vegetarian cooking of Japanese Buddhism, is served at temple lodgings as a set of small lacquered dishes: rice, miso soup, simmered vegetables, pickles, tempura of mountain plants, and tofu in several forms. It is cooked without meat or fish and without the pungent vegetables — onion, garlic, leek — that the precepts discourage, and it relies on kombu and mushroom for depth where other Japanese cooking would use fish stock.

Two local specialities come from that tradition. Goma-dofu, sesame tofu, is ground sesame set with kudzu starch into a dense, faintly sweet block eaten with wasabi and soy; it contains no soya beans at all, and shops along the main street sell it fresh. Koya-dofu, or kōridōfu, is tofu frozen and dried, said to have been discovered when blocks were left out overnight in the mountain cold; reconstituted in broth it has a spongy texture and a long shelf life, and it is sold across Japan under the mountain's name.

Beyond the lodgings the choice is small: noodle shops and cafés on the central road, sweet shops selling mochi and yaki-mochi filled with bean paste, and tea made from local plants. Wakayama's persimmons, mountain vegetables and kudzu appear in season, and the shops stock the prefecture's umeboshi and sake for anyone taking food back down.