Nijō Castle — castle
Image by Moechann from Pixabay

Nijō Castle

  • 2 min read
  • 35.014° N 135.748° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The Ninomaru Palace includes a Musha-kakushi-no-ma, a bodyguards' chamber from which hidden guards could step out to protect the shogun.
  • After the castle passed to the imperial household, the Tokugawa hollyhock crest was removed wherever possible and replaced with the imperial chrysanthemum.
  • In 1868 the new imperial cabinet was installed in the castle, only a year after the last shogun had given up power there.
  • Builders absorbed part of the old Shinsen-en, a garden of the original imperial palace, and used its abundant water for the castle ponds.
  • The lost keep had five storeys; after lightning destroyed it in 1750, a citywide fire in 1788 also wiped out the buildings of the inner ward.
  • The present Honmaru Palace is only a small part of the Katsura Palace, which had 55 buildings in its original setting within the imperial enclosure.
  • The South Gate was not part of the original fortress: it was added in 1915 for a visit by the emperor.
  • The enthronement banquet of Emperor Hirohito was held at the castle in 1928.
  • The modern Seiryū-en garden, laid out in 1965 for official guests of Kyoto, contains more than 1,000 carefully placed stones.

Why it is worth it

Nijō Castle is a castle built to impress rather than to fight. In 1601 Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the lords of western Japan to pay for a residence in Kyoto for the Tokugawa shoguns. The shoguns ruled from Edo, but the emperor's court remained in Kyoto. The work was finished under his grandson Iemitsu in 1626, and it included a keep and gate moved from Fushimi Castle. Two rings of walls and wide moats enclose the grounds. The keep burned after a lightning strike in 1750 and was never rebuilt, and its stone base still stands in the south-west corner of the inner ward. In 1867 the Ninomaru Palace was the setting for the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, to announce the return of power to the emperor. The castle then became an imperial villa. In 1939 it was given to the city of Kyoto and opened to the public the following year. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto.

The Ninomaru Palace is the main reason to come. Its six connected buildings of hinoki cypress are National Treasures, and room after room was painted by artists of the Kanō school on sliding doors and walls, amid lavish gold leaf and elaborate wood carving. The layout sorted visitors by rank: lesser callers waited in the outer rooms, and only important guests reached the inner audience halls. The corridors squeak and chirp underfoot. These are the famous "nightingale floors", although the sound comes from clamps rubbing against nails, not from an alarm designed to catch intruders.

The grounds are almost as rewarding as the palace. The Ninomaru garden, credited to the tea master and designer Kobori Enshū, arranges stones and pines around a pond with three islands. Groves of cherry and plum make the castle a spring destination. The Honmaru Palace in the inner ward came from the Katsura Palace in the Kyoto Imperial enclosure and was moved here in 1893–1894. Seiryū-en, a newer garden with two teahouses, was laid out in 1965.

Getting there

The castle is in central Kyoto, about 1 km from the city centre. Nijōjō-mae Station on the Tōzai subway line is a one-minute walk from the gate, and several city bus routes stop at "Nijōjō-mae". The nearest airport is Osaka Itami (ITM), about 38 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Kyōto Prefecture 19The Most Beautiful Places in Japan 122The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Japan 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Japan 20The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Castles 24The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 92The Most Beautiful Castles 94The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Nijō Castle is a flatland castle in Kyoto, Japan. The castle consists of two concentric rings (Kuruwa) of fortifications, the Ninomaru Palace, the ruins of the Honmaru Palace, various support buildings and several gardens. The surface area of the castle is 275,000 square metres, of which 8,000 square metres (86,000 sq ft) is occupied by buildings.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

35.01417, 135.74750per Wikidata