Kyoto - Nijo Castle: The Ninomaru

We only had one day in Kyoto, but we managed to pack the castle into that one day. It was definitely one of my favorite parts of Japan.

Before the Edo Period, Kyoto was the capital city of Japan. There is an imperial palace there (which I have not been to), but also the Shogun's castle, called Nijo Castle. Built around 1603, burned and restored a few times, this castle is quite large and has both fortifications and pleasant gardens.

I'm going to have to break this up into a few posts.

This is the Higashi Ote-mon, or the East Gate. It used to be a 2-storied gate, but that was changed when the emperor visited; you see, no one could look down at the emperor. 

This is the Ban-sho, where the guards were stationed

This was the interior of most buildings. You will notice that the floor is not made of wood, but rather something soft and rather fragile. Most places wouldn't let you wear shoes inside because of this. As you can imagine, my feet were not happy by this point. 

This is one of the towers. 

The Southeast Watchtower, I think. It is one of only two that survived fires. 

This is the wall of the Ninomaru, which... I think means Outer Palace? It's one of the two palaces inside the castle walls. 

This is the Karamon Gate, the gate that goes into the Ninomaru. It's beautiful! See the next pictures for the designs. 

That flower in gold is the symbol of the imperial family.

Anyway, that was the Karamon Gate. The Ninomaru Palace was fascinating, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. 

Outside, we saw these two bells, and I have to be honest, I don't remember what they were for:

For the sake of completion, I'm going to summarize the three parts I remember best about the Ninomaru.

First, it was the home of the Shogun when he lived in Tokyo, so it was very artfully decorated. All the rooms had paintings, and as you walked in a circle around the inside, it was like walking through the four seasons. I definitely remember seeing tigers and leopards in the paintings--neither of which are native to Japan. I heard one story that the Shoguns believed the tiger was a male and the leopard was a female of the same species (or was it the other way around?) and there was one painting that showed a leopard nursing two leopard cubs and a tiger cub. 

Second, there was a hallway called... I think... the Corridor of Nightingales. (Nightingale Corridor? Nightingale Hallway? Something like that.) Whenever someone walked on the floorboards,they would creak, and sound like singing nightingales. 

Third, and most relevant for me, this was the building where the Tokugawa Shogun first dismissed all the Samurai and then released power to the Meiji Emperor. This was the building where the age of the Shoguns ended. (That's what the tour guide said, anyway.)

Well, that's the first half of Nijo Castle! Check back later for more, because oh wow is there more. 

Day 4 - The Shinkansen!

Otherwise known as the bullet train!

I remembered reading about those when I was a kid in elementary school, but I wasn't sure whether I'd go on one this trip. Well, it turns out that when you're traveling from Tokyo to Kyoto, the best way to go is by shinkansen.

Bullet train is an appropriate name!

The trip of Tokyo to Kyoto only took us about 2 hours, and we got to see Japanese scenery and towns as we traveled.

The part that I was most excited about was how different all the buildings look. In China and South Korea, the buildings all look very similar.

That's definitely a mountain... but I don't think we were ever able to verify whether it was Fuji or not. Without snow in October, I'm guessing not. 

Maybe Fuji? I still think it's a different mountain

Check out how cool some of those houses are!

The tall pink one made me smile

Some kind of farm... possibly a rice farm? I'm not sure...

Anyway, after the shinkansen ride, we reached Kyoto, which might be my favorite city in Japan. Lots more on that to come!

Tokyo, Day 3 - The Meiji Shrine

Yes, I realize how long it's been since I posted, but this post is rather important (at least to me), and I wanted to get it right.

Time for a bit of Japanese history!

For as long as Japan has been recording history, they have had the exact same family in the emperor's position. However, the emperor wasn't always the real ruler of the country.

Think of Medieval European society: you had the kings, but you also had knights. Knights could be nobles, high to low. The lower knights would pledge their service to a higher knight, and those higher knights would pledge their service to someone higher, and so on until a knight finally pledged loyalty to a king.

Japan's Samurai were very similar to the European knights.There were lower-level Samurai and higher-level Samurai (daimyo). The highest Samurai was called the Shogun.

For a long time in Japanese history, the Emperor was there as fulfilling a ceremonial role (remember that the Japanese considered the imperial family to be part divine), but the Shogun was the real ruler of Japan.

That all changed in 1868 when the 15-year-old Meiji declared he wanted Japan to be industrialized and end Japan's isolation. The Shogun didn't agree with Meiji, but in the end, he formally stepped aside and allowed Meiji to take complete control of the government. As Emperor, Meiji opened up many new options for trade with Japan. He also adopted many western habits (for example, see this picture), such as western clothing, western food, and western wine. Many of the changes he made propelled Japan from a medieval-style country to an industrialized country in an incredibly short time. Basically, because of Meiji's reforms, the Japanese army was powerful to defeat Russia in 1905, and then to take part in WWII in the 1930's and 40's (and we all know how that ended).

Meiji's reforms made him very popular with the people in Japan (not the former Samurai, obviously, but many of the common people). According to some of the tour guides around Tokyo (I think at the Samurai Museum...), the Meiji Shrine was paid for entirely by donations.

Here's the entrance.

It's Japan, so of course I had to include a picture with sunflare

The entrance to the shrine proper

More pretty woodwork

If I remember correctly, these two trees are considered to have some sort of deity, although I can't remember if it's the emperor and empress or someone else. Regardless, they're a symbol of long-lasting marriage, and the little offering box on the bottom left is for people who want to pray for a successful and happy marriage.

Looking back at the square from the shrine.

I was debating whether to include the next pictures or not, but oh well...

The first picture shows the barrels of French wine sent to the shrine. These are donated by Burgundy wineries every year. This is a reference to Meiji's embracing western and foreign ideas. 

These barrels are Japanese sake (SAH-kay, not sake). These are dedicated to Shinto gods.

Pretty bridge

Meiji Shrine is probably my favorite shrine. It was so peaceful and quiet, with such lovely trees. Definitely a must-see if you are in Tokyo!

Tokyo, Day 3 - The Samurai Museum

Who doesn't love Samurai?! (Except for Ninja lovers, I guess...)

The Samurai were to Japanese feudalism what knights were to European feudalism. They were the high-ranking, professional warriors. There aren't any anymore, but I'll get to that...

The Samurai Museum is a private museum, and rather like the Science Fiction museum in Seattle, most of the artifacts come from one person's private collection. I learned some very cool things there!

• Samurai armor is custom-made, so no two will ever look the same
• It is designed to be intimidating, which is why it sometimes looks impractical

I won't share too many pictures. Instead, I'll just share three things I learned:

The Samurai were the first to come up with "Kamikaze"

The word kamikaze actually means "divine wind", and it goes back to a time when the Samurai were fighting the Mongols - the second-to-last army to ever come near to invading the Japanese homeland. 

The first battle went dramatically well for the Mongols, leaving the Samurai struggling to know how to defeat them. They ended up praying for help from the gods. That night (next day? I don't really remember), a massive typhoon swept up the Japanese coast and destroyed the Mongol ships. The Samurai named that storm kamikaze, which means "divine wind".

I'll let you conclude the connection between that and WWII on your own.

The design for a very famous movie character's armor came from the Samurai

Does this picture remind you of anyone?

Supposedly, that's part of the inspiration for Darth Vader's armor!

End of the Samurai

I kind of knew this before, but this was still somewhat new to me. 

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo harbor with six mechanized warships. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing in America, but Japan had lived in near-total isolation for the reign of the Shoguns, and there was no industrialization there. 

So when Perry's six steam-powered ships sailed into the harbor, the Shogun, the Samurai, and the Japanese people were rather rattled. 

The Emperor at the time, Meiji, was only fifteen, but he decided he wanted Japan to industrialize so that it wouldn't be at a technological disadvantage to other countries. The Shogun at the time disagreed; he believed that Japan's ancient traditions would be damaged if the country were industrialized. The two of them disagreed for a time, but in the end, the Shogun decided that it would be better for Japan to industrialize. However, he didn't wan't the Samurai to turn western, so he disbanded all the Samurai. Then he resigned himself. This transferred power back to the Emperor, ending generations of shogun rule. Named after the emperor, this transfer of power is called the Meiji Restoration. 

That is the story they told us at this museum, as well as two others. I've been browsing various college websites for the last hour, and none of them tell that story the same way. Some of them say that monetary troubles and unrest in the peasant classes made the Shogun's rule unstable, so he decided to shift the rule off to Meiji to satisfy the people. Something else interesting that I noticed is that at the museum run by foreigners (the Samurai and Ninja museum in Kyoto), they say the westerners forced the young Meiji to go along with them, while the Japanese-owned museums (this one and the Meiji Shrine) claimed that Meiji made that decision himself. 

In conclusion...

Anyway, those are some awesome things I learned from the museum. However, because museums are awesome places, they also had a display of Samurai sword skills at the end for us to watch. Once the display was over, we got to have pictures with the swordsman:

The other cool part is that, like a number of other museums, they let you try on a Samurai helmet replica. And, because I'm me... 

Anyway--sorry this post took so long to finish. I was trying to research it a lot and back it up with sources, but in the end, both novel-writing and teaching full time just don't leave much room for research-blogging. 

In any case--more coming soon!