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Richard | all galleries >> Galleries >> Our Trip to Japan: May, 2014 > Main entrance gate to Nijo Castle at sunset - as seen from across the street at our hotel, the ANA Crowne Plaza in Kyoto
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Main entrance gate to Nijo Castle at sunset - as seen from across the street at our hotel, the ANA Crowne Plaza in Kyoto

Nijo Castle was built in the early 1600's by the first shogun of the feudal Edo Period (early 1600's to mid 1800's). Supposedly the palace buildings are the best existing examples of Edo Period castle architecture in Japan. After the Edo Period ended Nijo Castle was used as an imperial palace.
Three main areas comprise the Nijo Castle complex - the Honmaru (main circle of defense), the Ninomaru (secondary circle of defense) and some gardens that encircle the Honmaru and Ninomaru. A moat and a stone wall surround the entire castle. Another moat and stone wall surround the Honmaru area.
During the Edo Period Ninomaru Palace served as the residence and offices of the shogun during his visits to Kyoto. The Palace is a huge structure but simple in design. It has 33 rooms and over 800 tatami mats (straw mats used in traditional Japanese buildings) on the floor. The Palace is comprised of several buildings connected by hallways. The so-called "nightingale floors" in the hallways were designed to squeak when stepped upon; they served as a protection from intruders. The rooms are in the simple, traditional Japanese style with beautiful wall paintings in some of them.
As we saw in other traditional buildings in Japan, the function and structure of the rooms reflected the status of its occupants and how the rooms were used. The shogun would meet only with the highest ranking officials in the main audience room deep inside the Palace. Here the shogun would sit on an elevated floor flanked by a young boy holding the shogun's sword and bodyguards hidden behind special doors of closet-like spaces. Lower ranking officials would be allowed only as far as the adjoining rooms without direct view of the shogun. The innermost rooms were offices and living chambers. Only the shogun and his female assistants accessed the living chambers. When we saw the rooms of Nonomaru Palace, many of them had mannequin replicas of the shogun and other Japanese officials in period clothing - the mannequins enhanced our visual sense of how things might have looked when the rooms were functional in feudal times.
A second complex Honmaru was added to the Castle in the 1620's but was destroyed by fire in the 1700's and never rebuilt. An imperial residence was moved here after the shogunate ended in the mid 1800's and is now called the Honmaru Palace. Generally it is not open to the public.
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