Nagoya’s Treasure Chest

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

This morning we said goodbye to Takamatsu, and I wasn’t sorry to leave. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t that interesting. It wasn’t easy to get around. It wasn’t always easy to understand or be understood by local residents. It wasn’t easy to find a sit-down restaurant for dinner. With the exception of the outstanding Ritsurin Garden, I feel that Takamatsu is skippable. You could easily visit Ritsurin on a daytrip from Okayama. The train ride to Takamatsu takes only an hour. If you want to see Naoshima, using Okayama as a base for a day trip probably works better.

I had to go to Takamatsu to figure this out. Now, you don’t have to. Sometimes those out-of-the-way places are quite delightful, and sometimes they are just places that are off the main tourist track for a reason.

We took the Marine Liner, an express train, back to Okayama, and from there we took the Shinkansen on to Nagoya. 

The Shinkansen is awesome. If you are standing next to the track with your back to the direction the train will come from, you will not know it has arrived until the leading car has entered your peripheral vision. It’s that quiet.

Upon arriving in Nagoya, we proceeded to the Hilton, and it was such a delight to be in a hotel that is so well run by a staff that was so incredibly gracious and attentive.

The weather was on and off drizzle with a very low cloud ceiling.

The view from our room at the Hilton. The tall, unusual building on the left is the Spiral Building - very beautiful. Its design, based on half-square triangles, is very appealing to a quilter.

We needed a little time to motivate ourselves to go out again on such a lackluster day, but we finally got ourselves out the door and we soon arrived at the Nagoya Castle and Hommaru Palace, where Ninja with umbrellas tried to prevent us from entering.

This was the first castle in Japan to be designated a National Treasure. The castle was partially destroyed in 1945 during air raids. Reconstruction has been an ongoing project since 1957. The main castle structure is now unsafe, and plans have been made to tear it down at some point and rebuild from scratch, based on existing architectural plans and photographs. Thus, it is not possible to enter the Castle, but it is magnificent from the outside.

The approach to the Castle was lined with (closed) booths selling snacks such as
sponge cake balls on skewers.

I love this!

This is the Front Second Gate, one of the few remaining original structures of the Castle.
It is an Important Cultural Property.

The Castle’s website is worth a look for the professional photos and video. 

The Castle was completed in 1615 by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Shogun. Tokugawa Ieyasu is a name that keeps popping up in our travels. (If you watched the 2024 Hulu mini-series, Shogun -  or if you read the book by James Clavell - you may remember Lord Toranaga. It is pretty obvious that the fictional Toranaga is based on Tokugawa.)

Hommaru Palace was part of the original castle compound. It was destroyed in 1945, but most of the irreplaceable screens inside the palace had been put into storage at the beginning of the war and were preserved. The Palace has been rebuilt using the exact methods and materials that made the original palace resplendent. I was really wowed by it. The rooms seemed to go on forever, and each one had stunning screens and beautiful details such as transoms. The Palace consists of 13 connected structures, with a total floorspace of over 33,000 square feet.

The entrance to the Palace

Upon entering, we were required to remove our shoes and put on some dorky slippers. (I got a blister from shuffling around in them.)

Genkan, the Entrance Hall, consisted of two rooms. It was the first area that visitors hoping for an audience would pass through. A tiger and a leopard stared the visitors down from gold walls.

Omote Shoin is the Main Hall, consisting of five rooms, where official audiences were held. It was adorned with flowers, birds, and civet cats.

Taimenjo, the Reception Hall, was used by the Lords for private meetings and banquets. These four rooms are decorated with depictions of the customs of the era and famous sights.

The six rooms of Jorakuden Hall were intended for visitations by the Shogun. These luxurious spaces feature detailed artwork, decorative fixtures, carved transom windows, splendid coffered ceilings, glossy lacquered accents, and paintings depicting the actions of a righteous king.

 We have more photos, but you get the idea. 

We tried a local specialty for dinner: miso katsu. It is simply a breaded, fried cutlet (katsu - the same as everywhere else), with a thick, intense miso-based sauce instead of the usual fruity, vinegary tonkatsu sauce.

Today’s fabric is the tatami border (tatami-heri). This is the border on the tatami mat - a straw mat used as flooring in a traditional Japanese room. The heri seen in the Palace,would most likely have been made of hemp, which yields the best quality. All the tatami we saw inside the Palace had the same heri. It appears to be a stylized pattern, possibly suggesting the family crest of one of the lords. Below, the edges of two tatami in the Palace are butted together, so you are seeing two heri, or borders, so well-aligned that they almost appear to be a single strip of fabric.