April 18 - Beautiful Kyoto

After we sailed from Fukuoka we spent the next day in the port for Hiroshima.  Once again I didn’t book a tour there.  All of them involved going to the museum and the blast site and I had heard it would be extremely crowded because this is the end of a holiday time here in Japan.  In fact later in the day some of my friends came back and said it was packed and it was difficult to move around.  As with Nagasaki I have read accounts and seen photos of the aftermath and so I didn’t want to go.  Instead I took the shuttle bus to the central city and walked around for a couple of hours through a shopping district.  I didn’t buy anything which is good because I don’t need anything.

On Thursday the 18th we docked in Kobe and from there I took an all-day tour to Kyoto, which in my opinion is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve visited.  I went there a couple of times back when I lived in Newport News and was involved in the Sister Cities program.  We had a sister city which is close to Osaka and Kyoto and my hosts had taken me there.  

We boarded our bus for the 90-minute ride to Kyoto.  Our guide Eiko spoke much better English than our last guide in Fukuoka and I learned much more than I did the other day.  Just an aside about English in Japan.  Many people here begin learning English as soon as they begin school so by the time they are out of school they are proficient at grammar and spelling, maybe better than some of our own students.  Unfortunately they learn the language from other non-native speakers and they often have terrible pronunciation.  I know of a number of people who have relatives who easily got jobs teaching English here in Japan because there is such a big demand for native speakers.  But back to Kyoto.

Kyoto is one of the oldest cities in Japan.  It was chosen to be the seat of the imperial court in 794 and for nearly eleven centuries the emperors ruled from the city.  Japan has a very complicated history which I learned little about in the past and only have a small understanding of now.  Briefly, and I hope accurately, before 1603 Japan went through civil wars among various shoguns, who were military leaders who supposedly answered to the emperor.  In 1603 Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu won a battle which ended the wars and he became the uncontested military leader of the country which throughout it all and still today has an emperor.  Tokugawa organized the country and society in a strict feudal and class system.  The emperor was still the titular head of state but the Shogun was the de facto ruler of the country.  Tokugawa established his seat of power in Edo, which is modern day Tokyo.  The emperor continued to reside in Kyoto and the Shogun built a castle nearby.  That castle was one of the places on our itinerary.  Just to bring my limited knowledge of history to the present, in 1868 the Shogunate was overthrown because of a lot of things going on in the country including the opening up of Japan to foreign trade.  The event is called the Meiji Restoration and the emperor once again became the ruler of the country.  The court was moved to Edo (Tokyo). Following WWII the emperor became the symbolic head of state and the head of the Shinto religion, but actual executive authority lies with the Prime Minister and cabinet.  That’s a very brief and hopefully accurate description of Japanese history and government.  I hope I’m remembering it right and I think I’m going to have to read more about this because from what Eiko told us, all of this history has played a huge role in the country’s conduct in WWII.

Our first stop when we arrived in Kyoto was the Kinkaku-ji Temple, AKA the Golden Pavilion because of the gold leaf covered upper stories.   The Golden Pavilion is a Zen Buddhist temple and is designated as a National Special Historic Site.  The original building was a villa built in the 14th century by a powerful nobleman and was part of a complex of buildings.  In 1397 it was bought by a shogun upon whose death his family converted the villa into a Zen temple.  In the latter half of the 15th century during one of the many wars all the buildings except the Kinkaku-ji burned down. That building survived until 1950 when a novice monk burned it down and then tried to commit suicide nearby.  He survived but was arrested and convicted of arson. The monk was sentenced to seven years in prison but was released early because of mental illness and he died only a few months later of TB. 

One of the other buildings in the complex

These wooden buckets were there to put out fires.  Clearly they needed something else.

The Temple was rebuilt in 1955 and is supposed to be an exact replica of the original.  The pavilion is three stories, about 40 feet high, and the top two stories are covered in pure gold leaf. The building is topped with a golden phoenix, the bird that arose from the ashes.  Kinkaku-ji sits next to a small lake in which we could see a beautiful reflection of the building.  The surrounding area is a park with several other temple buildings and lots of pine and cherry trees.  We were a little too late to see the cherry blossoms but it must have been a magnificent sight when they were in full bloom.  The place is just serene and beautiful; I’d been here before in the autumn and it was equally lovely.

This is the star of the place

The tree and the ski slope green thing next to it are all one tree.

Our next stop was lunch – yes, food is always on the list of things to do.  We went to a beautiful hotel and had a lunch of recognizable food and I even had a small bottle of cold sake.  The only sake I’d ever tried before was warm and this was surprisingly good.

The little garden inside the hotel where we had lunch.  No food photos today.

My only glimpse of the imperial palace complex taken from the bus

Our afternoon stop was at Nijō Castle.  In the early 17th century the aforementioned Tokugawa ordered all the feudal lords of this part of Japan to contribute to the construction of this flatland fortress. The castle is one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto and covers about 68 acres of land.  There are several buildings which are support ones in addition to the main palace structure.  There are two moats, an outer shallow one which is more for show and an inner deeper one to actually deter people.

The main gate to Nijō Castle

Look at the gold leaf on the door columns

An inner gate

Look at the detail and the opulence

Entrance to Ninomaru Palace

The main building was the Shogun’s actual home and it consists of five connected buildings which together make up the Ninomaru Palace.  The building is constructed mainly of cypress wood which makes it somewhat rot, water and insect resistant.  The sliding doors and walls are decorated with wall paintings which include lots of gold leaf and carvings designed to impress visitors to the Shogun.  One of the really remarkable features of the palace are the “nightingale floors.”  The floors were  built with mechanisms beneath them so that when someone walks the floors chirp.  It’s an early warning system so that no intruders could creep in undetected.  The buildings and their various rooms aren’t arranged in a straight line either so that visitors couldn’t walk directly to the inner sanctum of the Shogun.  The lower ranking visitor only made it to the outermost rooms.  In the rooms where the Shogun would provide audiences to people, the floor on which he sat was raised an additional foot or so and the extra height was solid wood so that no one could crawl under and thrust a sword up to kill the man.  In each of the rooms in which he sat there are also four unconcealed doors behind which bodyguards sat ready to thwart any potential threat to the Shogun.  We weren’t allowed to take photos but I’ll put a couple of ones I’ve taken from the net to remember how beautiful these rooms were.

One of the audience rooms

This was the main audience rooms and these lifesize figures are there.  In the far distance is the Shogun

One of the corridors around the various rooms

The gates leading to different parts of the compound are also magnificent and very imposing.  They too feature lots of gold leaf and carving, all designed to make certain that any visitors knew that the Shogun was the big guy in the country.  The grounds themselves are nice but not nearly as serene and beautiful as at the Kinkaku-ji Pavilion.

The inner, serious moat

One of the defensive towers at the four corners of the Castle

When we left Nijō Castle we had time for a little drive through Kyoto.  This city was not bombed during WWII which was evidently a conscious decision on the part of the Allies because it was understood that the place had such historical significance to Japanese culture.  As a result there are quite a few old buildings.  We passed through Kyoto University which along with Tokyo University are considered the top schools in the country.  Near the university we passed the entrance to Chionji Temple whose long staircase was featured in the movie "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise.  In something that reminded me of the palace in Seoul, the area around the temple has lots of kimono rental shops where people can rent and dress up to take pictures in the temple and its environs.  We saw lots of beautifully gowned women walking along delicately in their kimonos and zori, the little flip-flop like shoes.

An Amazon dropbox I saw as we drove along

One of the many impressive gates near Kyoto University. It was the best I could do from the bus.

Entrance steps to Chionji Temple

Some young women in their rented kimonos

Then it was time to get back to Kobe and the ship.  During the drive Eiko sang some traditional Japanese songs and told us some historic and folklore stories about Japan.  It was a thoroughly wonderful day.  Kyoto is another one of those places where I think I could come back many times and still enjoy it.  I might even consider staying there for a few days.  If I were many (lots and lots) years younger and unattached, I think I would even consider trying to get a job as an English teacher there for a year.  The biggest drawback I can see is that I know maybe ten Japanese words and a couple of phrases and for a while I’d be hopelessly unable to communicate without a lot of pantomiming.  I’m not much younger so I don’t have to worry about it.  But one can dream.