~ W a y m a r k s ~: Life Lessons from a Shogun

I visited Nikkō on my very first trip to Japan in October 2003, but it was only a day trip from Tokyo. Just long enough to get the full flavour of the place, but not long enough to really appreciate or savour it properly. In the New Year of 2018 I returned there and stayed at a traditional onsen ryokan, a guesthouse with a spa fed by its own natural hot spring. This gave us plenty of time to see the town and the local area. Japan is at its most beautiful in Spring, when the cherry blossom sweeps across the country, and also in Autumn, when the maple leaves turn a beautiful shade of crimson – but winter can also be a very beautiful time of year, and, in my opinion, Nikkō is particularly beautiful when it is swathed in crisp white snow. The tall, reddish-brown trunks and evergreen needles of its pine forested hillsides, as well as the azure and emerald green cascades of water tumbling over the grey boulders of its mountain-fed rivers, give a wonderful contrast to the snowy whiteness. Winter can also impart a wonderful sense of stillness and quiet to the fresh mountain air too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu#/media/File:Tokugawa_Ieyasu2_full.JPG

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616)

The main reason Nikkō is a town which Japanese and foreign travellers are drawn to is because this is the place where the first of Japan’s Shōguns chose to be buried. In Tokugawa Ieyasu’s time Nikkō was already a well-established sacred site, home to several Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples which were first founded in the eighth century. The best-known shrine, Tōshō-gū, was built in 1617 and became a popular pilgrimage site throughout the Edo Period (1603-1868), when Japan was ruled by a military government (bakufu), with 300 regional lords (daimyō), led by the Tokugawa Shogunate – which ruled with the symbolic assent of the Emperor. Life under the Shogun’s rule was very strictly regulated and hierarchical, with the martial samurai constituting the highest class in society. For much of the Edo period Japan was essentially closed off from the outside world. The period of Ieyasu’s rule is also seen as instrumental in unifying modern Japan. When he died his body was buried at a shrine in Shizuoka, but in accordance with his wishes, on the first anniversary of his death, his remains were transferred to another tomb at Nikkō, at which point Ieyasu was also posthumously deified as Tōshō Daigongen – hence all shrines dedicated to him are known as Tōshō-gū. However, the religious authorities have never confirmed that this actually happened and the respective tombs have never been opened in modern times in order to verify which of the two shrines is actually his true resting place – although, naturally enough, many people assume that it is Nikkō’s Tōshō-gū which has the honour.

Ieyasu was a formidable man. Clever and cunning, bold but yet also careful. He regarded patience as the highest virtue. The remarkable ascendancy of his career was due to a combination of right actions at the right times. He clearly calculated all his moves and his alliances very carefully, even if his shifting allegiances meant betraying his former allies if it was deemed personally expedient – in that sense he can be seen as a rather shrewd and coldly calculating figure. But many of his alliances were also characterised by intense and long-lasting loyalties shared equally by both parties – the mutual bond between Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga perhaps being the foremost example of this. Even though Ieyasu was very clearly ambitious for total power, he never made the mistake of overreaching himself. He remained content to keep his military conquests within the bounds of Japan, wherein he sought to consolidate his power, and thereby bring an end to the feudal warfare between the different factions of Japan’s nobility, establishing order across the country. But that stability was maintained with an uncompromising iron fist, implemented with totalitarian ruthlessness. Ieyasu had no qualms about hunting down his dead rivals’ families, executing women and children without compunction. Initially tolerant of the arrival of Christianity on Japan’s shores, he later clamped down upon it with extreme ruthlessness, stemming its spread by executing anyone who openly professed to be a Christian convert. A recent movie, Silence (2016), directed by Martin Scorsese, vividly depicts this persecution with painful clarity.

In later life Ieyasu devoted himself to scholarship, versing himself in artistic pursuits and religious devotion. Sage-like pronouncements flowed from his brush with an eye to instructing his descendants so that they might model their lives and their conduct upon his example: “Life is like unto a long journey with a heavy burden. Let thy step be slow and steady, that thou stumble not. Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the lot of natural mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair. When ambitious desires arise in thy heart, recall the days of extremity thou hast passed through. Forbearance is the root of all quietness and assurance forever. Look upon the wrath of thy enemy. If thou only knowest what it is to conquer, and knowest not what it is to be defeated; woe unto thee, it will fare ill with thee. Find fault with thyself rather than with others.”

Arriving in Nikkō by train (it lies around 150 km directly north of Tokyo), the town itself is centred around a central street, lined with shops and restaurants, which slopes gently up to the Daiya River. A beautiful old, red bridge arches across the river, and would have been the main route for pilgrims heading to the shrines in Edo times. Nowadays people and cars alike cross the modern road bridge beside it. Across the road stone steps begin the increasingly steep ascent to the famous shrines which are dotted throughout the densely forested hillside. There are four main shrine and temple complexes with a central possessional way (omotesando) leading from the first, Rinnoji, to the second, which is the Tōshō-gū – with Ieyasu’s tomb set higher up the hill behind it. From Tōshō-gū two other parallel roads (the kamishindo and shimoshindo) lead down to the Futarasan-jinga and Taiyu-in (which is the mausoleum of Ieyasu’s grandson, Tokugawa Iemitsu, himself a Shogun). A stone torii, or sacred gate marks the entrance to Tōshō-gū. Beside the stone gate stands a five-storey pagoda, the Goju-no-to. Rinno-ji is Nikkō’s foremost Buddhist Temple, whereas the other buildings mentioned above are all Shinto shrines.

Tōshō-gū is by far the most lavishly decorated, here too there are four particular architectural features to note. The first is the three wise monkeys, sanzaru – “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” – which are carved over the entrance to the Shinkyusha, in which a beautiful white horse is stabled. The second are carvings of two elephants mounted on the gable end of the treasure house building opposite, known as the sozonozo. These were clearly depicted by a talented Edo-era artisan purely from hearsay rather than direct observation, as they look rather lumpen and oddly cartoonish, but are decidedly all-the-more endearing for that fact. The third, possibly the most popular, located inside the central enclosure of the Tōshō-gū itself, is the nemurineko (sleeping cat) carving. The fourth is the painted ceiling inside the Honjido – which depicts a large “Roaring Dragon” writhing through the clouds over your head. Here you are ushered round by a priest who demonstrates a peculiarity of the hall’s acoustics by clashing two wooden staves together. In most parts of the hall these staves resonate with a dull clack, but when struck precisely underneath the dragon’s face the whole hall echoes and reverberates in such a way that it fills your ears and you can feel it echoing in the pit of your stomach. It really is a remarkable sensation. You need to be stood in the correct spot to experience it, watching the priest perform the strike from elsewhere inside the hall doesn’t induce the same effect.

Passing beyond the sleeping cat carving, a long and neatly swept stone staircase leads further up the hillside to the Okumiya, the inner shrine – Ieyasu’s mausoleum. The tomb itself sits at the centre of a modestly sized stone walled enclosure. Looking like an ornate bronze bell or jar topped with a pyramid-like roof, Ieyasu’s tomb monument seems rather austere for such a grand and prominent figure in Japan’s history. However, it has a dignity which seems to befit its very peaceful wooded surroundings. A small path enables visitors to circumambulate the tomb and so see it from all angles without approaching it too closely.

Travelling beyond Nikko, just a short bus ride away, is the Lake of Chuzenji. This is well worth a visit, especially if you take the time to visit the Kegon Falls. This is a spectacular waterfall, which in the depths of winter looks like a fantastical sculpture made of enormous icicles, framed by snow-dusted trees and cliffs. The waterfall is actually the sole conduit for the water of Chuzenji Lake, funnelling the water into roaring torrent which then continues as the Daiya River, flowing along the foot of the hill, past the sacred shrines, and then curving round through the town of Nikkō before joining the Kinugawa River and heading off across the plain to Utsunomiya.

Given that Nikkō is so well-known for the Tōshō-gū’s three wise monkeys carving, it was a rather fitting conclusion to our stay that when strolling around the town, while killing time waiting for our train back to Tokyo, a family of real live monkeys briefly emerged beside one of the road bridges across the Daiyu River, not far from the train station. Watching them watching us it almost seemed as though, by some magical spell, the sanzaru embodying the genius loci of the ancient town of Nikkō, had momentarily come to life simply to say farewell and wish us a safe onward journey home.