Ryoan-ji was apparently built around 1490, which makes it roughly contemporaneous with Yoshimasa's Silver Pavilion. As early as 985 the site of Ryoan-ji had been used as the location of a private chapel for retired Heian emperors, and in the twelfth century a government minister of the Heian took it over and constructed a country villa, to which his grandson added a lavish Chinese-style lake and island garden in 1189. Thus the site had abundant water, something missing from other _kare sansui _gardens--although the style dictated that no water be used in the final Zen garden. After the fall of Heian and throughout the Kamakura deluge, the lake became a sort of lingering _ancien regime _touch, recalling the elegance of former days. (The remains of the lake, undoubtedly much modified through the centuries, still survive as part of the Ryoan-ji temple complex.) The original Heian owners retained possession of the site until approximately 1450, when it was purchased by Katsumoto Hokusawa, adviser to the Ashikaga and one of the instigators of the Onin War. During his period of ownership, Katsumoto built a country villa overlooking the lake-and-island garden, and like Yoshimitsu, he requested that his villa be made into a Zen temple when he Thed. As it turned out, the Onin War caused his wishes to be executed sooner than he might have expected; shortly after the villa was built the estate was transferred to the Myoshin-ji branch of the Rinzai sect, which also controlled a nearby temple called Ryoan-ji. Not long after Katsumoto's death, his villa and other estate buildings were set on fire during the Onin War and joined the general ruin of much of the rest of Kyoto. In the last decade of the fifteenth century the burned-out estate was restored by Katsumoto's son, but in replacing the buildings he chose a new style of Zen architecture known as _shoin_, which included a special bay window and desk modeled after those in Chinese Ch'an monasteries. The _shoin _style had been recently popularized in Kyoto by Yoshimasa, who chose the design for several buildings surrounding his Silver Pavilion. The _shoin _window overlooked the lake-and-island garden, but since the later Zen monks who controlled the estate had no interest in decorative landscape art, they walled off a small courtyard in front of the window and installed a flat _kare sansui _garden for contemplation, which soon eclipsed in interest the older lake-and- island landscape. Shortly thereafter the _shoin_ building was in turn destroyed by fire, giving the monks an excuse to bring in a pavilion with a long viewing veranda from the neighboring Seigen-in temple. This veranda, which was positioned along the long axis of the _kare sansui _garden, now permits group meditation, something not possible from the single window of the earlier _shoin _structure.