Kōra Munehiro was born in 1574 in Ōmi Province into a lineage of master carpenters serving the Kennin-ji school who had worked in Kyoto since his grandfather's generation. He repaired Fushimi Castle after the 1596 earthquake, entered Tokugawa service in Edo in 1604, and in 1632 became chief carpenter of the shogunate's newly created works office, a post he handed down through eleven generations of descendants until the Meiji Restoration. His major commissions include the Taitoku-in mausoleum at Zōjō-ji in 1632 and the five-storey pagoda at Kan'ei-ji in 1639, but his defining work is the 1636 rebuilding of Nikkō Tōshō-gū, for which shogun Iemitsu granted him fourth court rank. He retired that year, took the Buddhist name Dōken, and died in 1646.
