Komyozenji Temple — The Moss Garden Secret

One hundred meters from the crowds of Dazaifu Tenmangu, through a gate that most visitors walk past, lies Komyozenji — a Zen temple with two gardens that together represent the compressed philosophy of Japanese landscape design. The first garden (karesansui) is a dry landscape of raked gravel and angular stones. The second, behind sliding shoji screens, is a moss garden of such dense green quietude that visitors instinctively lower their voices.

The moss garden is a 15-meter-square rectangle covered in 30 varieties of moss — a living carpet that glows emerald after rain and turns golden in late afternoon light. The arrangement of stones within the moss is said to map the kanji character for the temple's name. Founded in 1273, the gardens were last renovated in 1905 and have been slowly re-aging ever since.