Kyoto's autumn began here, or at least its reputation did.

Eikando—formally Zenrinji, founded in 853—has been called momiji no Eikando, the Eikando of red leaves, since the age of the Kokin Wakashu, the tenth-century imperial poetry anthology. Some three thousand maples fill the grounds, and they turn early and turn hard, until the whole hillside compound seems to be burning quietly.

At its heart is an unusual figure: the Mikaeri Amida, a statue of the Buddha looking back over his shoulder. The legend says he turned to wait for a follower who had fallen behind, and the sculptor kept him that way—a Buddha caught mid-glance, permanently patient.

The center of the garden is Hojo Pond. Maples ring it completely, and on a still afternoon the reflection is so exact that from the bridge it becomes genuinely difficult to say which set of leaves is the real one.

Then there is the Garyuro, the sleeping dragon corridor: a covered stairway that climbs the rock face in a series of turns, its roofline said to resemble the spine of a dragon. Climb it and you arrive at the pagoda, where the city opens below you through a screen of red.

During the evening viewings some seven hundred lamps are lit across the grounds. Keage Station on the subway is a fifteen-minute walk; Nanzenji sits next door and the Philosopher's Path runs on from there, so the afternoon assembles itself around the temple without much planning.

The crowds are real, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Yet before the backward-looking Amida the crowd softens, almost without meaning to, and the red, which a moment ago was only beautiful, begins to look like something closer to prayer.