Blog

This prestigious theatre was built in 1963 to commemorate the 70 th  anniversary of the foundation of Nissay, Japan’s largest life insurance company.  This building in the first photo is a complex with offices and a theatre.  A mixed-use building was not common at that time though, thanks to the understandings and efforts of Hirose Gen, the then president of Nissay, Goshima Noboru, the then president of the Tokyu Group, Asari Keita, a famous director at that time, and Ishihara Shintaro, a famous politician at that time, the theatre was completed as one of the greatest ones in Japan.  Murano Togo, a Japanese master architect, designed the building featuring granite exterior, windows with balcony and decorative handrail, white marble interior, spiral staircases with red carpets, theatre interior design with curved walls and ceiling optimized for acoustic effects.  Because of the innovative design, might be too much advanced, it was criticized right after the completion, but it got highly reputed thereafter and finally won many first rank architecture awards.  It underwent full-fledged retrofit works leaving original designs in and out in 2015-2016.  This prestigious building boasts of original architectural beauty among other buildings lining along the moat of the Imperial Palace. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

In the Heian period, from the 9 th to 12 th  century, the people in Kyoto called Onjo-ji Temple just as the Temple (Tera in Japanese), whilst nearby Enryaku-ji Temple standing on the top of Mt. Hiei was called just as the Mountain (Yama in Japanese).  This means that these two temples were exceptional even for the people in Kyoto, the then capital city where many prestigious temples stood close together.  The doctrine of the Tendai sect of Buddhism, introduced into Japan by a Chinese priest Jianzhen in 754, was disseminated thereafter by two Japanese priests Saicho and Enchin throughout the country.  They were student priests studying in China.  After returning to Japan, Saicho established Enryaku-ji temple as the first temple of the Tendai sect, but after the death of him, Enchin took office as the head priest of the temple.  Enchin also established Enjo-ji temple as the branch temple of Enryaku-ji in 866 to make it as an important base of missionary work of the Tendai sect.  This triggered the battles over the orthodoxy of the Tenday sect between the two temples.  The monk soldiers of Enryaku-ji temple, who were said to be invincible, repeatedly attacked and burned Onjo-ji temple more than 50 times.  After many twists and turns, Onjo-ji has become the head temple of the Jimon division of the Tendai sect.  The first photo shows the Kondo main building, which was rebuilt in 1600 and is a national treasure.  The second one is the Nio-mon gate, originally built for a different temple in 1452 then relocated here in 1601. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

After the end of the Tokugawa shogunate system by samurais in 1867, the Meiji New Government by the politicians mainly from Satsuma and Choshu domains, present Kagoshima and Yamaguchi Prefectures, started the modernization of Japan.  They quickly tackled replacing the decentralization by more then 350 feudal lords with the centralization of administrative power under the emperor system.  Since samurais were deprived of a privilege as a ruling class, their frustration reached a maximum.  Consequently, a series of rebellions broke out here and there throughout the country.  The Seinan War was the last and the most serious one among them.   Saigo Takamori, one of the political heavyweights of the Meiji Government, stepped down from an important position to be the leader of the rebellion against the government, the so-called Seinan War, which was made up of so many dissatisfied samurais mainly from the old Satsuma domain.  The central government strived to organize commoners and samurais nationwide to form troops.  They eventually succeeded in suppressing the rebellion taking eight months.  The fierce battle between the two powers reached the turning point, the Tabaruzaka Battle in present Kumamoto Prefecture.  Saigo’s troops were unfortunately defeated by the government and they were obliged to flee to old Satsuma domain, Saigo’s hometown, where he committed hara-kiri.  The war ended.  Since the end of the war, Japan’s political system has been changed from the swords of samurais to the power of speech.  The first photo shows the old battlefields of Tabaruzaka.  The second one is the storehouse-style construction with many bullet-holes on the exterior walls.  http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

The Mitsui Miike Coal Mine, whose pitheads were in Omuta City, Fukuoka Prefecture and Arao City, Kumamoto Prefecture, was discovered at the beginning of the 18 th  century.  As it was during the feudal years, the mine operators were three local feudal domains such as the Yanagawa domain, Kurume domain and Miike domain.  The main use of coal at that time was the fuel for the salt industry, but in accordance with the modernization progress thereafter, the use of it remarkably changed to the fuel for the iron industry and the power source of transportation facilities.  To cope with this situation, the then Japanese government nationalized the coal mine in 1873, then sold to the Mitsui Conglomerate, the then largest private enterprise in Japan, in 1888.  Right after the acquisition, they tackled full-scale mechanization of the mine to make it Japan’s greatest coal mine in terms of output.  After the Second World War, however, it was finally driven into the discontinuing in 1997 because of the transition of energy source from coal to oil.  Many old facilities of the mine have been preserved untouched as they were in the past.  The photo shows those facilities of the Manda Minehead in Arao City, Kumamoto Prefecture.  This is designated as an important cultural asset as well as a component of a World Heritage. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

The bell of Onjoji Buddhist Temple in Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, is one of the three major temple bells in Japan.  This bell is the best one in terms of a timbre and two others are of Byodoin Temple in Kyoto City in terms of shape and of Jingoji Temple in Kyoto Prefecture in terms of inscription on a surface.  The first photo shows the bell of Onjoji Temple, which is the second generation.  The first generation, made in the 13 th century, is displayed in a small exhibition hall in the temple precincts as shown in the second photo.  2,250kg in weight, 123cm in width and 199cm in height, the first generation is the second largest bell following the bell of Todaiji Temple in Nara City, among those which were made in the 13 th  century.  This bell has scratches and cracks on its body.  It is said that, these various scars were made when Benkei, a monk soldier of Enryakuji Temple with superhuman strength, dragged the bell during a battle between Onjoji Temple and Enryakuji Temple.  The present bell, the second generation, was made in 1602 and the size is almost the same as the first generation.  http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

Kyoto, the capital city of Japan from the 8 th to the 19 th  century, quickly declined right after the capital relocation to Tokyo in the 19 th  century.  The population of it nearly halved. As a major countermeasure, the then governor of Kyoto tackled a big public work to build a 20km-long canal to bring water from Lake Biwa to Kyoto.  They planned to utilize the water for the hydropower generation, industries, agriculture and water transport for the locals.  This canal was completed in 1890 after a 5-year construction period and was Japan’s first full-scale public works only by Japanese engineers.  After the completion, the second canal via a tunnel was built in 1912, 100 meters north of the first one in the two photos.  With these two canals, Kyoto largely had a benefit as planned.  Thanks to the electricity, Japan’s first streetcar started to run in Kyoto in 1895.  In this connection, there are many beautiful villas of Japan’s super rich person in Higashiyama area in Kyoto and they necessarily have Japanese garden with central ponds.  The water of the ponds come from Lake Biwa by way of the canals. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

Biwako Hotel was built in 1934 in order to accommodate foreign VIPs.  The construction site was blessed with scenic beauty and easy access from Kyoto.  This hotel was one of the fifteen Western-style hotels in major tourist resorts built under the national policy at that time. This was designed by Okada Shinichiro known as the architect of Kabuki-za in Tokyo, Osaka City Central Public Hall, Holly Resurrection Cathedral in Tokyo, and the like.  The names of the VIPs over the world such as Emperor Hirohito, King and Queen of Thailand, Helen Keller, John Wayne, Kawabata Yasunari are found in the old guest list.  This prestigious hotel relocated 2 kilometers south in 1998.  At the request of the locals, thereafter, the authorities carried out full-scale renovation work including seismic retrofitting on the refined building.  In 2002, the old building revived as a multipurpose commercial facility under the new name of Biwako Otsukan.  In this connection, as the building was used as an important scene of a smash-hit film on the theme of kabuki titled “Kokuho (national treasure)” in 2025, the number of the visitors has skyrocketed recently. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

Hikone Castle was built at the beginning of the 17 th  century for the Ii family, one of the four faithful families greatly contributed to Tokugawa Ieyasu to establish the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo.  At the time of the castle construction, neighboring fifteen daimyos were ordered by Tokugawa shogun to join the work.  The work was a kind of national project, the so-called Tenka Bushin, the same as the construction work of Edo Castle, shogun’s base.  Construction materials such as stone and lumber were obtained from abandoned castles in the vicinity like Otsu Castle and Sawayama Castle.  They were dismantled to build Hikone Castle.  Hikone Castle consequently became the one and only castle in the province, serving as a herald of the later shogunate’s law of the One Castle per Province.  As Hikone area was strategic crossroads for east-west routes, crucial battles between big powers took place frequently.  Hence, the Tokugawa shogunate put importance on the castle as an impregnable defense facility against the powerful western daimyos.  The second photo shows the entrance of the castle tower.  The entrance was designed locating at the very upper part of the stone foundation to connect with a wooden bridge.  The bridge could be destroyed just in case to repel enemy soldiers.   http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

Ebisu, generally with a fishing rod in its right hand and sea bream in the left, is a god of a good catch.  *Please refer to the trademark of Yebisu Beer on its bottle or can. Daikokuten, with a mallet of luck in its right hand shouldering a cloth bag of treasure, is a god of a good harvest.  Since the 14 th century, the Seven Lucky Gods, the so-called Shichifukujin, have been worshipped by ordinary people in Japan.  So, Ebisu and Daikokuten, included in the Seven Lucky Gods, have been worshipped together with other five lucky gods.  These two gods are guardian of Japan’s most important primary industries, fishery and farming, hence they gradually became Japan’s most familiar gods.  In accordance with the industrial modernization of the country, they were regarded as the gods of business prosperity.  These two gods are generally worshipped together as a pair of gods of business prosperity mainly by merchants.  The first photo shows a pair of statues of them placed in a traditional Japanese restaurant.  Ebisu on the right and Daikokuten on the left.  The second one is a mask of Ebisu on the exterior wall of the entrance of a restaurant.  A religious restaurant owner may hope the success of his business. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

This area and its vicinity had prospered in commercial activity since the 9 th  century, because the district is a key junction on the main roads, connecting then capital Kyoto with the major cities in the district along the Sea of Japan, in the mountainous area and along the Pacific Ocean.  There were a variety of markets to exchange those goods in the district.  Some merchants running these markets gradually became influential and they expanded the business area to Kyoto, Osaka and Edo (present-time Tokyo) from the 17 th  century.  Too many existing big businesses to count were born here.  They are Mitsui, Sumitomo, Seibu, Takashimaya, Marubeni, Itochu, Toyobo, Torey, Wacoal, Takeda, and so on.  The old quarter of Omi-hachiman City, where some of these big businesses were born, remains as it was as shown in the first photo.  Hachiman-bori canal, the water transport base for the merchandise coming and going, is also left intact as shown in the second photo.  These old Japanese scenes are very helpful as the backgrounds to make period films.  The 4.7km-long canal, built in 1585, was useful not only for water transport by way of Lake Biwa but also for getting business information from the merchants from other areas.  Having been planned to reclaim because of water contamination in the 1960s though, it regains original figure answering the locals' opinion. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa shogun, built Edo Castle as his base of government, making the most of the several major rivers near Tokyo as natural moats.  He never built any bridges over them and adopted ferry boats instead for the transportation of people and goods.  Yagiri-no-Watashi dating back to the 16 th  century was one of them.  There were 15 ferry routes just in Edo River systems in the golden age.  Most of the ferry routes were equipped with check points and those who dared to cross the rivers secretly were strictly punished.  The feudal system by the Tokugawa successive shoguns came to an end in the 19 th  century then Japan’s modernization started.  The check points were abolished and new bridges were spanned over those rivers in place of the water transport.  Hence the old rowing ferryboats gradually disappeared.  Now, only Yagiri-no-Watashi ferry has survived in Tokyo.  This regularly runs over the Edo River between Shibamata in Tokyo and Yagiri in Chiba Prefecture.  The ferry is very well known as it appeared as a setting in novels, films and popular songs.  But this ferry is not for the locals but for sightseers now. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/

There is a nice landscape Japanese garden for strolling around behind the Daikyakuden Guest House of the temple originally built in the 17th century.  This garden, named Suikeien, was built at the beginning of the 20th century then improved in 1965 by Nagayama Rakuzan, a master landscape gardener in Tokyo.  Present-time Suikeien garden was designed by him. The garden, the entire areal of 2,000 square meters, is surrounded by a meandering connecting corridor with a roof but no wall, so that visitors can appreciate it even on rainy days.  As to the carved wooden panels, the best ones are seen on the zelkova exterior walls of Taishakudo Hall standing right in front of the Niomon main gate.  A series of sacred stories stated in Hokekyo, a Buddhist scripture, is delicately carved on the thick zelkova panels by the top 10 woodcarvers in Tokyo at that time.  It took more than 10 years to be completed. As these sculptures are highly reputed, Taishakuten Temple is also called the temple of wood carvings. http://tour-guide-japan.jp/