was Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

's first Zen

Zen

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

 temple, founded in Saga, Kyōto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

 by order of Tachibana no Kachiko

Tachibana no Kachiko

, also known as , was a Japanese empress. She was the chief consort of Emperor Saga. She was the daughter of .The empress was a devout Buddhist. She founded the Buddhist Danrin-ji temple complex, and for this reason, she came to be called Danrin-kōgō....

 during the Jōwa era

Jowa (Heian period)

was a after Tenchō and before Kashō. This period spanned the years from January 834 through July 848. The reigning emperors were and .-Change of era:* February 14, 834 : The new era name was created to mark an event or series of events...

. The temple was destroyed by fire in 928, but was restored, and during the Muromachi period

Muromachi period

The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji, two years after the brief Kemmu restoration of imperial...

 the temple was designated as one of Kyōto's five great Buddhist nunneries. The temple eventually fell into disrepair, and in 1339 construction of Tenryū-ji

Tenryu-ji

—more formally known as —is the head temple of the Tenryū branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism, located in Susukinobaba-chō, Ukyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. The temple was founded by Ashikaga Takauji in 1339, primarily to venerate Gautama Buddha, and its first chief priest was Musō Soseki. Construction was...

began on its grounds.