When the great Heian Period statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga died in 1027, he left his comfortable suburban retreat on the banks of the Uji River to his son Yorimichi (along with a good deal else).
The Fujiwara were then at the peak of their power in the age sometimes called the Fujiwara Period, now usually seen as the first glorious blossoming of Japanese culture. To contemporaries, however, it seemed a dark and threatening time, beset with famine, plague and sin. According to one line of Buddhist thought, the last age was about to begin, the time of Mappo -- the End of the Law.
The Fujiwara were haunted by the fear that their very pride and power, sins in themselves by Buddhist tenets, would be their downfall. In 1052, the year which had been calculated as the beginning of Mappo, Yorimichi dedicated the Uji estate as a temple of Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise, naming it the Byodo-in.