Kyoto · JP

Matsunaga Hisahide Grave Site (Myōe-kai Cemetery)

Tucked behind the great wooden walls of Nishi Hongan-ji in downtown Kyoto, a quiet old cemetery guards one of the most scandalous names in Japanese history: Matsunaga Hisahide (1508–1577). His stone grave marker, inscribed with his Buddhist name Myōkyū-den Yūsetsu Daikishi, sits inside the Myōe-kai Sōbōsho, a burial ground that began life as Hisahide's own town estate. Here, centuries later, the warlord whom Oda Nobunaga branded a triple criminal rests in the very city where he once maneuvered against shoguns and burned the Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji. This is not a grand monument but a working graveyard of weathered gravestones and memorial halls, the kind of place that rewards the curious history traveler who likes tracking down a forgotten name. A short, respectful walk through the stone-lined lanes lets you stand at the grave of a true Sengoku survivor—a former scribe turned warlord, a famed tea aesthete, and one of Japan's archetypal villains—and to read his story right where his house once stood.