A Piece of Two Histories

Nagoya Castle

History 1: Originally built in 1612 by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The site of the construction was carefully picked to secure an important position in the middle of Japan and to ward off attacks from the direction of Osaka.

History 2: During World War II the castle was used as an army head quarters and as a POW camp. In May of 1945 during an air raid this historical castle and it's surrounding buildings were burned almost completely to the ground. A few towers and three gates that were made of metal and the paintings on the sliding doors of the palace survived.

Today you can tour the rebuilt donjon and walk the grounds of this real property of Japanese history.

(Maybe I'm the only one but I had no idea what a "donjon" was so I had to google it. I learned that it was built with castles. It was sometimes used as the dungeon. Donjon, dungeon . . . oh yeah that makes sense. And it could also be used as the fortress or residential hall. It was the most defended area of the castle and so it probably contained the wells, food, armory and anything else that would be needed during a siege. After I realized what a donjon was it amazed me at the amount of architecture and delicate Japanese details that went into building this fortress.)

Among other things, the items that set the Nagoya Castle apart from other Japanese castles are the golden dolphins that grace it's roof top as a symbol of the feudal lord's authority. Although the original dolphins burned in WWII they reappeared in 1959 when the reconstructed donjon was complete.

The two dolphins are slightly different. The one on the South side is female and is a little smaller than it's male counterpart on the North side.

On the third floor of the main donjon you are taken back in time to the 17th century when bookstores looked like this.

And laying the foundation for palaces and castles was done like this.

Actually these three guys weren't strong enough to pull that big stone on their own. They had a little help.

Amazing how strong the Cesar kids are when they want to be.

Had you have been a visitor in the palace at that time you would be fortunate enough to sit on the floor adorned by your beautifully decorated kimono in a room like this and admire the delicate paintings while you sipped green tea and discussed the aspects of the feudal society and maybe bartering your chickens for access to the drawbridge . . . or something.

Nagoya Castle really was intriguing and I would have loved to stay longer. We'll have to make another trip just to walk around the gardens and hopefully learn a little more about Japanese history while we're there.

To finish the day we decided to extend the historical Japanese cultural experience to modern day culture by eating at a typical Japanese noodle restaurant.

The perfect ending to our cultural field trip day.