Jakoin is where Kenreimonin Tokuko, daughter of Taira no Kiyomori, retired as a nun after the Taira clan fell at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. She lived here in seclusion and received a visit from Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, the "Ohara Gokou" episode in the Tale of the Heike. The temple embodies Kiyomori's rise and the Taira clan's fall.

A Tendai nunnery nestled quietly in the village of Ohara, traditionally founded in 594 by Prince Shotoku to pray for his father Emperor Yomei.

In the autumn of 1185, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127–1192) visited Jakko-in in Ohara to call upon Kenreimon-in Tokiko — consort of Emperor Takakura and mother of Emperor Antoku — who had taken Buddhist vows and was living in a humble hermitage after the destruction of the Taira clan at Dan-no-ura. This scene, known in The Tale of the Heike as the 'Ohara Gyoko' (Imperial Visit to Ohara), depicts the emperor visiting the former high consort in her forlorn retreat, the two lamenting together the fall of a clan that had once ruled the land. Go-Shirakawa, the 'greatest tengu in the realm' who had outlasted the power struggles of the Genpei War, is here shown in a profoundly human moment of shared grief, making it one of the most memorable scenes in the entire Tale of the Heike.