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Nijojo doesn’t look much like Japan’s other castles. Besides being a somewhat rare flatland castle, there aren’t three or more levels like most of the castles in Japan.
A few hours passed before these clouds unleashed their fury, but they did later in the day. I took refuge here.
Recently I’ve been reading Romulus Hillsborough’s Samurai Revolution which says that “Tokugawa Iemochi became the first shogun in more than two centuries to set foot in the Imperial Capital, staying at his castle, Nijojo, in the western part of the city.” (p. 226) As I walked through Nijo Castle last summer and saw the figurines depicting the shogun addressing all of the daimyo it never crossed my mind that such an event never, or at least seldom, took place. I pictured the scene to be something like an annual one or at least one that happened for most Shoguns, but I guess that wasn’t so. According to this page, 229 years passed between shogun visits to the shogun’s flatland castle in Kyoto.