At Tanzan Shrine one red stands inside another. The centre of the site is a thirteen-storey pagoda — built in wood, thirteen tiers of roof — painted vermilion, and in the season the maples close around it. Painted red and grown red are close enough to share a register and different enough that the eye keeps sorting them apart. In low light the difference is texture, not hue. The maples here run from mid-November into the first ten days of December.

Tonomine is a deep mountain, and the turning is not confined to the grounds: the whole hillside changes, so from a distance you can read the season off the shape of the mountain before you arrive. Then, inside, the pagoda takes over the frame and the mountain disappears behind it. The subject swaps depending on where you stand. The same season, photographed at two scales.

The shrine keeps a long autumn festival period, and in the middle of it comes a night viewing, the pagoda lit from below, shadows running the opposite way from daylight. The mountain by day, the tower by night — the place quietly hands you a reason to come twice.

Stone steps link everything, and the shrine sits high enough that the temperature drops fast once the sun is off the valley. Wear real shoes, and bring one more layer than the city asked for.