Otagi Nenbutsu-ji sits in a quiet corner of the hills above Arashiyama, well beyond the bamboo grove and the day-tripper crowds. The temple was founded in the eighth century, washed away by a flood, rebuilt, blown apart by a typhoon, and moved repeatedly; the present site dates only from 1922 and feels, on a quiet morning, like a private discovery.
What makes it remarkable are the rakan — twelve hundred mossy stone figures of the Buddha's disciples, scattered up the wooded slope between the main hall and the upper gate. None of them are old. They were carved in the 1980s by amateurs invited by the then-chief priest to take part in the temple's reconstruction. The result is unforgettable: each rakan is unmistakably individual, many funny, some startling, the moss creeping over them year by year.