Natadera is said to date from 717, which puts thirteen centuries behind the rock this temple is built into. The colour runs early to late November — an early start for Ishikawa, and altitude explains it: the mornings here cool off before they do on the coast.

The centre of the site is Kigan Yusenkyo, a national place of scenic beauty — a face of eroded rock stacked into shelves and hollows, with trees rooted in the gaps. That is what makes autumn here different from a temple garden. The colour does not form a canopy; it scatters across grey stone as points of red and yellow, and the shape of the view is set by the rock rather than by the planting.

The buildings sit among that stone. The main hall, the three-storey pagoda, the goma hall and the bell tower are all designated important cultural properties, placed to be seen from below and from the side rather than head-on. The temple was founded on reverence for Mount Hakusan, and the layout still bends toward the mountain rather than away from it.

The gates open at half past eight. The first hour is the quiet one, and it is when the observation point above the gorge earns the climb, with the light still coming in low across the rock. Rock, trees, thirteen hundred years. Against all that patience, the colour lasts a month. Go while it does.