Category: Kyoto Special

Few things draw the Japanese masses as easily as nature viewing. I have written about this phenomenon in my article on moon viewing in September, and it is well known even outside of Japan that the Japanese are crazy about cherry blossoms in spring.

Now is another time of nature viewing – the time of koyo, viewing the autumn colours – not just any colours, but those of the maple. The momiji or Japanese maple has small, almost dainty leaves of about 4 cm length, which are induced – by a drop in temperature below a certain threshold – to turn from green to yellow to orange and finally to a blazing red. This change can occur quickly and it is a rather short lived beauty. Right now the red momiji are on their peak, and Kyoto is packed with (mainly Japanese) tourists who go around exclaiming kireii – pretty at every step and seem to take pictures of each individual leaf.

Well, when in Japan… here are a couple of my own pictures

One of my favourite places in Kyoto is Nijo-jo, the state residence of the Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period. It is situated pretty much in the centre of Kyoto, southeast of the emperor’s palace, on Nijo-oji dori. It has been started on orders of the first shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, in 1601, but was completed only in 1626, under Ieyasu’s grandson, the third shogun.

The whole complex of Nijo-jo comprises 275.000 square metres inside a wide moat, but only 8000 square metres are built upon. There are actually two castles on the ground, the inner citadel called Honmaru is surrounded by a moat, and on the grounds outside of it, in the eastern gardens lies the actual residence of the shogun, Ninomaru, the second citadel. The Tokugawa shoguns actually resided in Edo, today’s Tokyo (hence the name Edo-period), but still they needed to show their wealth and influence in Kyoto where the emperor resided as well, lest the people would forget who’s actually ruling the country. All of Nijo castle is built from wood, and despite it having burnt down and been rebuilt just to be damaged by typhoons, it is still a highly impressive site.

When the first moat is crossed, you enter Ninomaru palace through the Kara-mon gate. Ninomaru was designated as the residence of the shoguns (should they ever want to stay in Kyoto) and it is comprised of five buildings, all connected with corridors. As a visitor to the shogun, your entrance would be closely watched, and how far you would get inside the buildings would be determined by your rank – in Japan even then hierarchy was everything. You would start out by entering the retainer’s waiting rooms tozamurai-no-ma, go further to the formal reception room shikidai-no-ma and from there move on to the grand rooms ohiro-ma. Only very important people, for example messengers from the emperor would be allowed further into the inner audience chambers kuro-shoin.The total floor space of Ninomaru palace measures 3300 square metres, divided into corridors and 33 rooms covered by more than 800 tatami mats. Each of the large rooms are divided into smaller rooms by sliding doors, and the rooms are named after the paintings on those doors. All of them are lavishly decorated with gold and exquisite paintings of plants, trees, or animals, and on top of the doors there are intricate wood carvings, often looking different depending from which side of the doors you look at them. At the end of all the long corridors there are the shogun’s living quarters, the shiro-shoin. They are relatively modest in size, compared to the rest of the palace, and only female servants were allowed to enter there, obviously for safety reasons.

Many more measures were taken to ensure the safety of Japan’s ruler. For example, in some of the rooms where the shogun would be present himself, there are doors behind which armed men would wait for the faintest sign of distress to enter and protect their master. Many castles have these, and the doors are usually well disguised. Not so in Ninomaru though – the shogun did obviously not buy into the idea of discreet hinting – here those doors are well visible, and even decorated with big red tassels. The most interesting protective features of Ninomaru palace however, are its corridors. They are made of plain wood, but the boards are placed on nails in a special way such that each person walking on them causes the construction to chirp like birds – hence the name uguisubari – nightingale floors. Walking on them is quite some fun, not only for school kids, and the idea was to prevent intruders from sneaking up the corridors and launching a surprise attack.Crossing the second moat leads you to Honmaru palace. This part of Nijo castle measures 16800 square metres, and it was once the home of a palace similar to Ninomaru and also sported a large five-story castle. However, both buildings were destroyed by fire in the 18th century already, and there has been no attempt to rebuild them. The present Honmaru building once stood on the grounds of the imperial gardens and was moved here at the end of the 19th century. It is not generally accessible, so I cannot say anything about its interior.

The buildings are surrounded by beautiful Japanese gardens, three different ones stemming from three different periods: Ninomaru garden is the oldest, as it was constructed during the Edo period. Honmaru garden is the middle one, built in the Meiji period at the end of the 19th century, and the so called Seiryu-en garden is the youngest, having been constructed only in 1965.

As I said, Nijo castle is beautiful, if you come to Kyoto, it is one of the places you must not miss! Nijo-jo is now a property of Kyoto city and has been open to the public since 1940; in 1994 it has been designated by the UNESCO as World Heritage Site. Unfortunately, because the paintings in Ninomaru are 400 years old, it is not allowed to take any pictures there. A few photos can be found on the official Kyoto city website for Nijo castle though.

Today was a public holiday in Japan, the Autumnal Equinox Day or Shubun no Hi. Nowadays the idea is to say thank you for the harvest, a sort of thanksgiving. The holiday is a modernized version of what was called Shu Ki Koreisai, a day to pay respects to past emperors and the imperial family in general, introduced in 1878. And this day in turn probably goes back to ancestor worship in China. Note that the spring equinox is also a national holiday in Japan, with the same idea behind it.

When I was finished with my daily Japanese lesson today, I betook myself to a very small local matsuri in Omiya street, near the crossing with Imadegawa. It is in the old district of the weavers and cloth makers, and you could go into some of the old merchant’s houses and have a look. They are beautifully restored and many old pieces of furniture were on display, together with some of the traditional tools they were using. The houses had a room or two in front that once featured as a shop, then there was a small Japanese garden, and a narrow corridor next to it would lead to the private rooms at the back.

In several houses beautiful kimono were on display, and in one of them, I could watch a kimono painter at work. He was a man of at most 60 years, working in what is called the yuzen dying technique, and he explained that each of his kimonos consisted of 30 meters of silk (strips about 40-50 centimetres wide) and that one hand painted kimono needed 15 different steps of handiwork until its completion. Apparently the price for his garments is reasonable, considered that all of the work is done by hand, but I did not dare ask for a number. Unfortunately he did not answer my question as to how many hours of work one such kimono would need. It seems however, that the demand for this type of work is steadily on the decline, first because people don’t wear kimono anymore, and if they do for a special occasion here or there, the price is probably prohibitive in any case.