Yoshitsune Kakure-to Hall is an old structure located in the precinct of Kinpu Shrine in Yoshinoyama, Yoshino-cho, Nara Pref. The hall is down the narrow path beside Kinpu Shrine. Without a signboard, you might miss it. It is a Hogyo-zukuri (the square-styled) simple hall with a Hinoki-bark roof.
It is also called “Kenuke-no-to (literally meaning ‘a pagoda of kicking and escaping’)” because when Yoshitsune and his retainers, Benkei, Sato Tadanobu and others, hid themselves in this hall and were surrounded by the pursuers, they made an escape by kicking up the roof of the hall.
The hall is used as a training ashram of Omine Shugendo. In the darkness inside the hall, a Shugendo practitioner walks around to let out his own earthly desires by chanting “Kakure-to in the deep mountains of Yoshino is the habitat of eternal emptiness.” Full of legends and history, Yoshitsune Kakure-to Hall stands calmly as the place of meditation.