Sano could almost believe that all was well at the Tokugawa family temple, home to three thousand priests, nuns, novices, and their attendants—until he and his troops drew nearer. The two-story main gate lay in fragments by the road. Sano’s party trod carefully on shifted, crumbled stone stairs that led to the temple’s main precinct. Inside the precinct, people crowded the space around the temple buildings. Some sheltered under tents; others sat in the falling snow with nothing to protect them except the clothes on their backs. Children snuggled against mothers who held crying infants. The pagoda leaned as if in a fierce wind. Walls had peeled off the abbot’s residence and the novices’ dormitories, exposing empty rooms. Heat waves rose from the crematorium, where the fires that would burn more dead bodies during the night had already been lit. Rhythmic chanting emanated from the main hall, whose massive structure, carved columns and doors, wooden bracketry, and undulating roofs were miraculously intact.
