Nikkō (日光) is a mountain town north of Tokyo. One of Japan's most lavish shrine complexes stands here among towering cedars, waterfalls and lakes. Nikkō is a place of deliberate contrast. Japanese religious buildings usually look calm, simple and weathered. Here, instead, you find gold, colour and dense carving. This is the tomb of the man who united the country.
The shrine of the shogun
Nikkō is famous above all for Tōshō-gū (東照宮), the shrine of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu was the warlord who ended a century of civil war. He founded the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan for more than 250 years. After his death, Japan worshipped him as a god who guarded the nation. In the 1630s his grandson rebuilt the shrine on an overwhelming scale. He covered it in gold leaf and thousands of carvings. Two of them rank among the most famous images in Japan. One is the three wise monkeys, "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," above the sacred stable. The other is the sleeping cat, nemuri-neko. All this luxury was a deliberate show of Tokugawa power.
Mountains, cedars, and water
Nikkō is also a landscape. The road in runs along an avenue of giant Japanese cedars (sugi namiki, 杉並木). People planted them in the 17th century, and they still line the old roads for kilometres. Above the town, the mountains open onto Lake Chūzenji and the roaring Kegon Falls, almost a hundred metres high. They are most dramatic in autumn, when the slopes turn red and gold. An old saying boasts of Nikkō's beauty with a pun: "Nikkō o minai uchi wa 'kekkō' to iu na." It means "don't say 'splendid' until you've seen Nikkō."
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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東照宮 (Tōshō-gū): "shrine of the Light of the East," after the divine title Ieyasu received after his death. The main Tōshō-gū is at Nikkō, and branch shrines stand all over Japan.
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杉並木 (sugi namiki): an "avenue of cedars," the rows of tall cedars along the roads to Nikkō. They are a living monument in their own right.