Nikko: Lush, Historic Tourist Town

What struck me most about Nikko initially was its size:  at 90,000 it is one-tenth that of Tokyo, so it immediately felt like a small town.  I stayed in a rustic inn on the banks of the river, listening to the sound of rushing water as I went to sleep.  My visit essentially kept me on the main street, so Nikko also felt like a one-street town, even though it clearly isn’t.

And is Nikko lush!  I literally drank in the greenery of forested hills, the stands of towering cedars at the World Heritage site, ferns and moss growing everywhere.  It’s the rainy season, too, so there is mist or rain to add to the river, waterfalls, and little channels carrying water downhill.  My favorite sites were the stone lanterns guarding the temples and shrines, festooned with hats of moss and fern.  I had the feeling that, if the wooden temple buildings were not replaced every twenty years as is the custom, the walkways not weeded frequently, or the grounds maintained, the place would be overgrown in a century.

Nikko is famous because it houses the shrines and mausoleums of Tokugawa Ieyasu and his grandson, Tokugawa Iemitsu, and is the home of a Buddhist sect.  Tokugawa Ieyasu is the warlord who united Japan and established the shogunate that ruled Japan for 250 years until the Meiji restoration in 1868.  Tokugawa Iemitsu centralized the country’s administration and closed Japan to the West.  The complex of shrine and temple buildings forms a World Heritage Site that attracts thousands of tourists each year.

 

Toshu-gu, the shrine for Tokugawa Ieyasu, was originally built in the 1630’s by  Tokugawa Iemitsu.  It is awesome, like many buildings constructed to show off the owner's power and wealth. The shrine’s buildings are richly painted and decorated with woodcarvings of trees, animals, birds, and flowers.  A storehouse has carvings of monkeys portraying “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.  The walls surrounding the main building have panels, each different, of birds and trees and the ceilings are richly painted.  One has a dragon covering the entire ceiling.  When you clap two pieces of wood together, the sound reverberates in what might be construed as a dragon’s (soft) roar.

There are a number of gates before you can enter the main building, starting with a simple wood torii and becoming more elaborate until the last, ornately carved white-painted gate.  The latter gates have scenes of people and priests, full of life and humor.  For the last gate, it is said that the workmen turned one of the pillars upside down, fearing that the gods would become angry at such a lavish gate. 

Tokugawa Ieyasu’s tomb, however, is quite simple.  You go through a low gate, up a path of stairs to a small, walled in area with his tomb, a large stone cylinder, simply carved, with a roof.  A crane and a turtle, symbols of good fortune and longevity, guard the tomb.  It was quite moving.

Women weeding the rocks

I also visited Tokugawa Iemitsu’s shrine – less elaborate but still quite wonderful – and the other buildings and temples, walking on stone paths up the hills to those less frequently visited by tourists and groups of school children.  It was here that I realized what a job it was to keep the forest and the rain from reclaiming these buildings; you could almost watch the moss and seedlings creeping towards them.

Part of Nikko's main street

As I walked down the main street to dinner, I saw a number of tourist shops, mostly selling “omiyage”, tourist gifts the Japanese take back to their friends.  Many stores seemed empty, closed, or vacant.  When I asked my innkeeper, he said that this is the rainy season, so of course there are few tourists.  The really busy time for Nikko is in the fall, when the maples are turning and the air is crisply clear.

Women on the train to Mashiko

Shoji Hamada pottery

I took a day trip to Mashiko, a nearby pottery town.  There’s a couple of nice pottery museums showcasing the work by Shoji Hamada, a Mingei folk-art potter and a living national treasure who put Mashiko on the map.  Mashiko certainly is a pottery town:  there are 380 different potters, who make everything from heavy, earthen and ash-fired work to everyday dishes to lighter and more refined work.