Nijō Castle

On a sunny afternoon in Kyoto, Japan, my mom and I decided to take a tour of Nijō Castle, the ancestral fortress and official residence of the Shogun in Kyoto. 

During the centuries of the Japanese Shogunate (which lasted from the late 12th century until the Meiji Restoration in 1868), the political capital of Japan was moved to Edo, modern-day Tokyo, while Kyoto remained the imperial capital.

The Shogun, Japan’s feudal military ruler, resided in Edo but would travel from time to time to Kyoto to pay ceremonial respect to the emperor. During these visits, Nijō-jo served as his official residence.

Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, Nijo Castle isn't a huge, impressive fortress-like Osaka Castle or the iconic Himeji Castle, but instead is a sprawling estate with a large single-story wooden villa surrounded by beautifully manicured gardens.

We removed our shoes and entered the castle. Photos of the interior were not permitted, but we were able to appreciate the beautiful golden murals covering the walls of the otherwise spartan rooms of the villa.

The walls were painted with scenes of plants, nature, and birds of the various seasons, and covered in brilliantly glittering gold leaf. However, there was little to no furniture to speak of, and the rooms of the Shogun, his courtiers, the officers, and household were bare, save for simple sets of wooden furniture.

Most interesting to me were the "Nightengale Floors", special floorboards which chirp and squeak when walked upon due to the friction between the nails and board clamps.

While possibly originally unintentional, the effect, which sounds very much like birdsong, came to be used as a security device, assuring that no one (for example, a ninja) could sneak through the halls undetected.

We walked past rooms containing centuries worth of history, until finally walking past the final chamber, complete with wax statues of the Daimyo (feudal lords) bowing before the Shogun who sat on an elevated wooden platform. This room was a representation of the moment in which Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the 15th and final shogun of the powerful Tokugawa Shogunate, finally ceded power to the Japanese emperor during the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when the Japanese emperor ended the Shogunate, militarized Japan, centralized politics, and opened the country's boarders to the outside world for the first time in centuries.

We left the castle and walked through the gardens. A traditional Japanese garden is a carefully composed work of living art, designed to evoke the feeling of an inked scroll painting which is being unfurled in front of the viewer as he or she walks along the set path. Each view is meant to be its own landscape painting.

It was very hot that day, and Mom and I finished our walk through the castle's gardens and finally arrived at a conveniently placed and very much welcome tea house. We ordered bottles of water and a mango bingsu to share.