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The estate
A Fujiwara estate became a Zen temple in 1450
The site was an estate of the Fujiwara clan in the 11th century. In 1450 the warlord Hosokawa Katsumoto acquired the land and founded the Zen temple Ryōan-ji. It was destroyed during the Ōnin War, and his son Hosokawa Masamoto rebuilt it in 1488.
The tombs
The temple holds the Seven Imperial Tombs
The temple served as a mausoleum for several emperors. Their tombs are grouped together in what are today known as the Seven Imperial Tombs. They reached their present state in the 19th century restoration ordered by Emperor Meiji.
The dispute
No one agrees who built the garden, or when
There is controversy over who built the garden and when. Most sources date it to the second half of the 15th century, others to between 1618 and 1680. One stone carries the carved names of two kawaramono, Hirokojirō and Kotarō.
The rubble
The garden seen today was laid over rubble after the fire of 1779
A description from 1680 to 1682 shows nine big stones laid out as Tiger Cubs Crossing the Water. A great fire destroyed the buildings in 1779, and the rubble was dumped in the garden. Akisato Rito then redid the garden on top of it.
The stones
Fifteen stones, and one is always hidden from the veranda
The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters, twenty-five meters by ten meters. Fifteen stones stand in five groups on white gravel raked each day by the monks. From the veranda it is not possible to see all of them at once.
Fifteenstones in five groups, never all in view at once
Day 2, afternoon
It comes after Tenryu-ji. Then Kinkaku-ji.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Ryōan-ji, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.