Nijō Castle

In the waiting rooms at Nijō Castle, tigers slip through bamboo on gold-leaf sliding doors. The bamboo continues across the joins, so the eye follows the painting before it registers the doors. This was the room before the room that mattered. The shogun could keep a visiting lord waiting in very good company.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord who inspired Lord Toranaga in Shōgun, had the castle built in 1603 as his Kyoto residence. The interiors of Ninomaru Palace owe much of their splendour to a later visit. In 1626, Ieyasu’s son and grandson received Emperor Go-Mizunoo here for five days of Noh theatre, poetry and court games. The Kanō school painted the rooms for the occasion. Look up in the grand hall and there’s a piece of cypress carved open, with a different design on either side. Even the people in the next room got their own view.

The grand hall has two levels. The shogun sat on the higher one, his visitors below. In 1867, the last Tokugawa shogun gathered his retainers here to hear their views on returning political authority to the emperor. He announced his intention to do so the following day. It’s worth looking at that step a little longer.

Deeper in the palace, cherry branches bloom across the walls of a smaller audience chamber. In the rooms believed to have been the shogun’s private quarters, the paintings are in ink wash. The floorboards chirp as you pass. After the tigers and the gold, there’s room to hear them.