Shrines and Temples of Nikkō

Listen first. Somewhere above you, wind moves through cedar crowns that rise far higher than any roof here. Down at ground level the air is cool and damp, and it smells of moss, wet stone, and a faint thread of incense. Your feet crunch on gravel. Through the dark trunks, flashes of vermilion and gold appear. Then they vanish again into the green.

This is Nikkō, in the mountains north of Tokyo. What you are walking through is not one site but a cluster of them. UNESCO listed them together in 1999 as the Shrines and Temples of Nikkō. There are three main parts. Tōshō-gū is the shrine of a shogun. Futarasan is the much older shrine to the mountains themselves. Rinnō-ji is the Buddhist temple. For centuries these three were woven so closely together that people hardly separated them at all.

The story begins long before any shogun. According to tradition, a Buddhist monk named Shōdō Shōnin came here in the eighth century. He wanted to reach the sacred peaks beyond this valley. Legend has it that the rushing Daiya River blocked his way. A deity then appeared and released two great snakes. Their bodies formed a bridge, and the monk walked across. That tale is folklore — but it explains a structure you may already have seen.

It is the Shinkyō, the Sacred Bridge, a curved span lacquered in deep red over the grey-green water. For a long time, ordinary people were not allowed to cross it. It was reserved for priests, for imperial messengers, and for the shogun's processions. Today it marks the threshold of the sacred district. Stand on the riverbank and watch the colour against the current. The red does a job here. In Japanese shrine tradition, vermilion is linked to protection against evil.

Now the shogun. Tokugawa Ieyasu united Japan after more than a century of civil war. His family then ruled the country for roughly two and a half centuries. He died in 1616 and was deified as a protective god of the nation. His remains were brought here to Nikkō. The first shrine was relatively modest. It was his grandson, the third shogun Iemitsu, who transformed it. Under Iemitsu, the shrine was rebuilt on a lavish scale, with the major work completed in the 1630s.

That rebuilding was also a message. Building on this scale took enormous wealth and labour. The great feudal lords of Japan were expected to contribute. In this way the shrine honoured a dead ruler. It also showed every rival family exactly where power now sat. So when you look at the gold leaf and the dense carving, you are looking at devotion. You are also looking at politics — written in lacquer and wood.

Before the main gate, find a plain wooden building. This is the sacred stable, where a horse dedicated to the gods was kept. Look up under its eaves. There, among a series of carved panels, sit three monkeys. One covers its eyes, one its ears, one its mouth. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Most visitors photograph that single panel and move on. Here is the surprise: it belongs to a longer sequence. The panels follow monkeys through the stages of a life, from infancy to adulthood. The famous three are teaching a child how to live.

Ahead rises the Yōmeimon, the gate that many people come here to see. It is covered in more than five hundred carvings — sages, children at play, dragons, flowers, and mythical beasts. Its nickname is Higurashi-mon, which roughly means the gate where the day goes by. The idea is that you could stand before it until sunset and still not take in every detail. Look closely at the white columns. On one of them, the carved pattern runs the opposite way. Locals say this was done on purpose. Something perfect, the belief goes, begins to decline — so the builders left the gate unfinished on purpose.

Inside the precinct, one quieter treasure waits. Above a passage leading towards the inner area is a small carving called the Nemuri-neko, the Sleeping Cat. It is usually attributed to a craftsman known as Hidari Jingorō, though much about his life sits closer to legend than to record. The cat looks tiny and peaceful. Turn around, and on the other side of the same panel, sparrows play. One reading is that this is a picture of peace. The cat sleeps, so the birds are safe.

Beyond the cat, the mood changes completely. A long stone stairway climbs through the cedars, around two hundred steps. The colour fades away and the gold disappears. At the top, Ieyasu's tomb stands in plain bronze and stone, under the trees. After all the display below, it is very simple. Many visitors find this climb is the moment the place makes sense. The bright shrine is for the living. The quiet summit is for the dead.

One more sound to try. Inside a hall called the Honjidō, a large dragon is painted on the ceiling. A priest claps two blocks of wood together directly beneath its head. The echo rings back with a strange, shivering hum. This is the Crying Dragon. Clap a few steps away, and you hear almost nothing. The effect depends on exactly where you stand.

Not far away, Rinnō-ji shows the Buddhist side of Nikkō. Its great hall, the Sanbutsudō, holds three huge gilded wooden statues of Buddhist figures. In the late 1860s, the new Meiji government ordered Shinto and Buddhism to be formally separated. Places like Nikkō, where both had grown together, had to be divided. Walk on to Futarasan Shrine, and you return to the oldest layer of all. It honours the deities of the surrounding mountains, including the volcanic Mount Nantai, which rises above the region.

As you walk away, notice the cedars again. Many line the old approach roads into Nikkō, planted in the seventeenth century as an offering to the deified shogun. Some of those trees still stand today. Touch the bark if you can — rough, reddish, and cool. Iemitsu wanted gold to astonish his guests. In the end, it is the trees, the stone, and the sound of the river that most people remember.