Secrets Behind Nijo-jo
Nijo-jo, the site of Shogun Tokugawa leyasu’s castle, is a short bus or taxi ride up Horikawa-dori. The bus stop is called Nijo-jo mae, “in front of Nijo Castle.” It is impossible to miss, the moat, the white wall blocks along, the massive gate will tip you off. And yet, there’s no castle here. The five-story castle keep that once stood here (like the ones still standing in Osaka and Himeji) burned to the ground in the 18th century.
What there is to see instead is perhaps more splendid. The shogun’s reception palace, where he entertained the emperor, and received his vassals from around the country, survives perfectly intact from the early 17th century. The first glimpse of the building, framed in the Karamon Gate, is a dramatic moment. The drama continues within, where room after room of Kano school screen paintings depicting tigers, cranes and pines on gold leaf backgrounds, exquisitely carved and decorated transoms, shelves and coffered ceilings lead toward the shogun’s inner chambers. The palace is veritable textbook of feudal Japan, its every lavish detail bearing significance in the code of daily life around the military hegemon.
Just around the corner from Nijo-jo (but these are big Kyoto blocks, a 15 minutes walk) is Nijo Jinya. This 17th-century building was built as an inn for daimyo (landowning) lords visiting Kyoto. Seen from the outside, Nijo Jinya is the very antithesis of its grand neighbor, so modest in fact, that you may pass it by accident. It hides many secrets behind its quiet exterior. The 24 rooms of the inn are all equipped with hidden escape passages and ingenious devices that would impress Houdini.
Shatrunjaya, a Glorious Sacred City on the Crest of a Mountain
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Two thousand years ago in India, the legend goes, a Jain priest who could fly, and a disciple who could create gold founded a glorious sacred city on the crest of a mountain. They called it Shatrunjaya (place of victory). Now it is the Jains holiest pilgrimage site, and every year believers come for a day, a week or even months. To most Jains, these pilgrimages to Shatrunjaya, near Palitana in the western state of Gujarat, are sacred obligations. In seeming contrast to their workaday lives as India’s premier bankers and businessmen, the country’s two million Jains follow an intensely spiritual tradition. Jainism is one of India’s ancient religions, dating from the 6th century B.C., and adherents believe life continues eternally in successive reincarnations. Through good acts, like pilgrimages to worship the 24 tirthankars (gods) of Shatrunjaya who guide their soul’s advancement, they seek to make each reincarnation bring them closer to nirvana.
Curiously, Shatrunjaya is itself a triumph of reincarnation. After its early temples were destroyed by Muslim invaders in the 14th and 15th centuries, the site was completely rebuilt over the next 400 years, with an explosion of new construction in the early decades of the 1800s. When discovered in 1840 by James Fergusson, a Scottish export merchant who was to become the father of Indian architectural history, Shatrunjaya was a sight to make the heart surge, a shimmering city of tall spires rising from more than 850 stone temples. For Fergusson it was an unimaginable find. Here was architecture that not only resembled European Gothic but, he declared, rivaled it, and builders whose methods revealed the “processes by which cathedrals were produced in the Middle Ages.” Shatrunjaya has nine tunks in all, most named for their patrons. For example, one honors a 19th century businessman with a problem, his banker, who years earlier had personally covered a fabulously large overdrawn check for him, refused to accept any reimbursement. So, in the Jain tradition of endowing temples (“The Jains put their money into stone,” the saying goes), the businessman solved the problem by putting the money into a tunk.
Visiting Shatrunjaya more than a century later was a way to live out a childhood romance with Fergusson’s adventures. The climb to Shatrunjaya takes about 90 minutes, an assault of 3,282 stone steps that rise about 600 meters. Although some people ride up on sedan chairs, most prefer to make the trip by foot, luckily, it’s a comfortable ascent. Walking sticks, nearly essential are available for hire. The steps divide into broad, well-maintained staircases with low, easy risers. Interspersed flat landscaped paths offer relief from climbing, and there are also resting spots along the way.
Lady Liberty is Something Almost Every Visitor Wants to See
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Lady Liberty is something almost every visitor wants to see. The statue is located on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. It is a mile and a half southwest of Manhattan. It is just off the New Jersey coast. Castle Clinton serves as the boat dock for boarding the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Circle Line ferries leave Battery Park seven days a week for the ten-minute ride to Liberty Island.
Lady Liberty has lifted her lamp since 1886. Her multimillion dollar restoration was finished in 1986, in time for the statue’s centennial celebration. The huge statue is a national monument. It portrays liberty as a woman stepping free of broken shackles. She extends a flaming torch in her right hand. In her left hand she carries a tablet. The tablet represents the Declaration of Independence.
The statue is 151 feet tall and stands on a pedestal. The tip of the torch is 305 feet above ground level. Lady Liberty is the work of French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi spent ten years working on the project. Copper sheeting was shaped over carved wooden forms. This was done by hammering the sheets by hand. Bartholdi built the statue in France, section by section. It was shipped to New York where it was put together on the island.
The statue was a gift from the people of Frence to the people of the United States. The original statue cost over $250,000. The money was provided by contributions from residents in more than 180 French communities. The statue and its pedestal were paid for in part by donations from Americans. Many schoolchildren made contributions.
Over the years, the statue’s copper exterior suffered from exposure to the weather. Many other repairs were needed. This brought about the massive restoration job. Your visit to the statue includes an elevator ride that stops at a balcony. This runs around the top of the statue’s pedestal. Here you can look out in all directions. It’s a great view on a clear day. There are descriptions telling what you are looking at. If you want a view from an even higher spot, you can climb 168 steps to reach the observation platform at Lady Liberty’s crown. It offers a wonderful view of the harbor, Ellis Island, and both the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines.
You also will want to visit the American Museum of Immigration. This is in the base of the Statue of Liberty. There are exhibits telling the story of immigration to the United States. These relate how the statue came to be the symbol of the United States. In this museum, as well as on the statue’s pedestal, is the famous poem about Lady Liberty. Written by Emma Lazarus, it includes the well-known lines: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Just north of Liberty Island is Ellis Island. From 1890 to 1943, Ellis Island was the primary immigration center in the United States. Millions passed through here. The ships on which they arrived first went by the welcoming arms of Lady Liberty. At the peak of immigration, more than one million newcomers were processed here in a year. The immigration center was moved to Manhattan when Ellis Island was closed. Ellis Island became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965. It was opened to tourists eleven years later by the National Park Service.