Arashiyama, Kyoto: The Bamboo Grove and the Hills Beyond

Arashiyama, on the western edge of Kyoto, is where the city gives way to wooded hills, a broad river and the old village lanes of Sagano. Emperors and courtiers came here for boating and the autumn leaves, poets came for the quiet, and today almost every visitor comes for one short path through a grove of towering bamboo. That path is genuinely beautiful, but it is also one of the most crowded places in Kyoto by mid-morning, and the district has far more to offer than a single photograph. This guide covers the bamboo grove, Tenryu-ji temple, Togetsukyo Bridge and the quieter temples and hermitages of the northern hills, with honest advice on when to go and how much walking to expect. On Day 13 of our Walking Japan small group tour, the group ends a full day of Kyoto’s temples with an afternoon walk through the quieter Sagano hills to Gio-ji and Rakushisha.

Why Arashiyama has drawn visitors for a thousand years

Strictly speaking, Arashiyama is the forested mountain on the south bank of the river, but the name now covers the whole district on both banks, including Sagano to the north. The area has been a retreat from the city since the Heian court ruled from Kyoto. Nobles came to drift on the river in pleasure boats, a custom that the Japan National Tourism Organization notes still survives in the boat trips on the Hozu River. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Go-Saga had several hundred cherry trees brought from Mount Yoshino while building his villa here, according to Japan’s Forestry Agency, and in classical poetry the name Arashiyama became almost shorthand for autumn colour. The district is today designated a national Historic Site and Place of Scenic Beauty.

The Arashiyama bamboo grove

The bamboo grove is a lane, not a park. A Japanese government publication describes the Chikurin-no-Komichi, the Path of Bamboo, as some 400 metres long, running from the area around Nonomiya Shrine past the north gate of Tenryu-ji and on up towards the Okochi Sanso villa. On either side, bamboo stems rise close together to a canopy high overhead, and the light that filters down is soft and green even at midday. Low fences of bundled brushwood line the path and keep visitors out of the grove itself.

Basho knew the bamboo groves of Saga. Among the verses he wrote here is one about a cuckoo calling while moonlight leaked through a great bamboo grove, and it is hard to walk the path early on a still morning without thinking of it.

The grove needs care, and there are simple rules of conduct. In recent years the bamboo has repeatedly been scratched and carved with names and graffiti, and the Kyoto City Tourism Association has issued a public request asking visitors not to damage the bamboo, noting that it harms both the plants and the whole landscape. Do not touch, write on or carve the stems, stay on the path rather than stepping over the fences, and keep voices low, because people live and work along these lanes. Rickshaws also use the path, so step aside when you hear one coming.

Tenryu-ji, the great Zen temple of the west

The most important building in Arashiyama is Tenryu-ji, the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon, and its back gate opens directly onto the bamboo path. The temple was founded in 1339 by the shogun Ashikaga Takauji in memory of Emperor Go-Daigo, the emperor he had first served and then driven from Kyoto. Go-Daigo had been raised on this site, in a villa built by his grandfather Emperor Kameyama. Takauji appointed the Zen master Muso Soseki as founding abbot, and the temple was later ranked first among Kyoto’s Five Mountains, the leading Zen monasteries of the city.

Tenryu-ji has not had an easy history. It was burned again and again, including during the Onin War of the fifteenth century and in the fighting of 1864 at the end of the Tokugawa era, so most of the buildings you see today date from the Meiji period. The garden is the great survivor. Muso Soseki designed the Sogenchi, a pond garden behind the abbot’s quarters, and it keeps its fourteenth-century form. A vertical arrangement of stones on the far bank suggests a waterfall, and the wooded hills of Arashiyama beyond the wall are drawn into the design, a technique known as borrowed scenery. The garden was among the first in Japan to be named a Special Place of Scenic Beauty, and in 1994 Tenryu-ji was inscribed by UNESCO as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto.

Sit on the veranda of the abbot’s hall and give the garden time; it was designed to be looked at from inside. At the time of writing, the temple’s official website lists opening hours of 8.30am to 5pm, with separate admission for the garden, the buildings and the Dharma Hall, which has a large painted cloud dragon on its ceiling and opens only on weekends, public holidays and set periods in spring and autumn. The buildings may close at short notice for ceremonies, so check the temple website before you go. If you have already seen Daitoku-ji, one of Kyoto’s great Zen monasteries, Tenryu-ji makes an instructive comparison: a temple shaped by a shogun’s politics, set in open country rather than a walled city compound.

Togetsukyo Bridge and the riverside

Togetsukyo, the Moon Crossing Bridge, is the landmark most people picture when they think of Arashiyama. Its name is traced to Emperor Kameyama, who is said to have remarked during a moonlit boating party that the moon seemed to be crossing the bridge. A bridge has stood here since the ninth century, but the present one, completed in 1934, is 155 metres long and only looks old: the Japan National Tourism Organization notes that its piers and beams are reinforced concrete and only the railings are cypress wood.

The streets at the northern end are lined with shops and restaurants and can be as busy as the bamboo grove. In summer, cormorant fishing takes place near the bridge in the evenings, and from the riverbank you can see the boats setting out for the Hozu gorge, where the river runs between steep wooded slopes much as it did when the courtiers knew it.

The quieter northern hills: Gio-ji and Rakushisha

Walk north through Sagano for twenty minutes or so and the crowds thin quickly, as the lanes pass farmhouses, small fields and temple gates set back against the hills.

Gio-ji is a tiny temple with a large story. Gio was a shirabyoshi, a court dancer, and the favourite of Taira no Kiyomori, the warlord who dominated Japan in the twelfth century. When Kiyomori turned to a younger dancer, Hotoke Gozen, Gio was dismissed and humiliated, and she withdrew to this hillside as a nun with her mother and sister. Hotoke Gozen, seeing that the same fate awaited her, later joined them. The story is told in The Tale of the Heike, the great epic of the war between the Taira and Minamoto clans, and the temple’s small hall holds statues of the women and of Kiyomori himself. According to the Japan Tourism Agency, the garden is known for more than 20 varieties of moss under a canopy of maples, and the thatched hall has a round latticed window that is much photographed in autumn.

Rakushisha, the Hut of Fallen Persimmons, is a simple thatched cottage with clay walls that recalls the retreat of Mukai Kyorai, one of Basho’s leading disciples; the present hut is an eighteenth-century rebuilding. Kyorai named it after a night when a storm brought down the fruit of almost forty persimmon trees on his land. Basho stayed here in 1691 and wrote his Saga Diary (Saga Nikki) during the visit. A straw raincoat and hat hang on the wall, the traditional sign that the host is at home, and stones carved with haiku stand in the garden. For readers who know Basho through The Narrow Road to the Deep North, it is a moving place to end a journey; our article on walking Japan in Basho’s footsteps traces the route that leads here.

Nearby, Nonomiya Shrine is marked by a torii gate of unbarked timber. According to the shrine, imperial princesses chosen to serve at the Grand Shrine of Ise purified themselves here before taking up their duties, and the shrine appears in The Tale of Genji. At the top of the bamboo path, Okochi Sanso is the former villa and garden of the period-film actor Denjiro Okochi, who built it over some thirty years; its paths climb to views across Kyoto and are usually far quieter than the grove below.

When is the best time to visit Arashiyama?

The best time to visit Arashiyama is early in the morning, ideally within an hour or two of sunrise, when the bamboo path is quiet enough to hear the wind in the stems. The Kyoto City Tourism Association lists the bamboo grove among the city’s best early-morning spots and points out that most visitors arrive from mid-morning onwards. Because the path is a public lane rather than a ticketed site, it can be walked before Tenryu-ji opens. Weekdays are calmer than weekends, and the cherry blossom season in spring and the autumn leaves, which usually peak from mid-November into early December, bring the heaviest crowds of the year. The official Kyoto Travel website publishes a congestion forecast that is worth checking before you set out.

Is the Arashiyama bamboo grove worth visiting?

Yes, if you go at the right time and treat the grove as one part of a longer walk. At a quiet hour, the path is as striking as its photographs. In the middle of the day it can be shoulder to shoulder, and the walk takes only a few minutes, so many visitors leave disappointed. The answer is to pair the grove with Tenryu-ji’s garden and then walk on to the northern temples, where the atmosphere that drew the poets is still easy to find.

How long do you need in Arashiyama?

Allow at least half a day, and a full day if you want to see both the riverside and the northern hills. The Japan National Tourism Organization recommends planning a half or full day so the visit is not rushed. A realistic half day covers the bamboo grove, Tenryu-ji and Togetsukyo; adding Gio-ji, Rakushisha, Okochi Sanso or a boat on the river easily fills the rest.

How much walking does Arashiyama involve?

Expect several kilometres of walking on mostly gentle ground, with some slopes and steps. The bamboo path itself is short and paved, but the lanes north to Gio-ji climb gently towards the hills, Okochi Sanso’s garden paths are steep in places, and temple gardens often have uneven stone steps and gravel. Several temples ask you to remove your shoes before entering their halls, so slip-on shoes are useful. Japan Railways’ Sagano Line, the Hankyu line and the Keifuku tram line, known locally as the Randen, all serve the district, so you can walk one way and ride back.

Arashiyama on Day 13 of the tour

Day 13 is the group’s second full day in Kyoto and the last full day of the tour. It begins at Nijo Castle, with its audience halls built for the Tokugawa shoguns, then moves by taxi to Kinkaku-ji; our guide to the Golden Pavilion of Kinkaku-ji explains the Kitayama culture it represents. Next comes Ryoan-ji, whose rock garden is often called the epitome of a Zen garden, covered in our article on Ryoan-ji and its famous dry garden. From there it is a short walk to a small station, where the group rides a local tram-cum-train out to Arashiyama in the west of the city.

In Arashiyama the group lunches on soba, buckwheat noodles, before an afternoon stroll through the low hills, where the scenery feels closer to rural Japan than to a city. The walk includes the small temple associated with Gio and her place in The Tale of the Heike, and Rakushisha, forever linked with Basho, a fitting close to a journey that has followed the poet north from Tokyo. The walk then continues through quiet, elegant suburbs before the group takes another train back to Shijo-Omiya in west-central Kyoto and transfers to the hotel. If you would like to walk the bamboo grove at dawn or spend longer at Tenryu-ji, consider extending your stay in Kyoto once the tour ends after breakfast on Day 14; our guide to Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital suggests where else to spend your time.

The tour is rated Activity Level 3, Moderate to Challenging, with participants typically walking for up to five hours a day, and an Odyssey Program Leader travels with the group throughout. Arashiyama is at its best when you arrive on foot, slowly, from somewhere quieter, and on the Walking Japan small group tour a group of up to 16 travellers does exactly that, closing nearly two weeks in Basho’s footsteps at the hut where he wrote his Saga Diary.