Nagoya's Castle

Nagoya's greatest pride is its Castle, which we spell with the capital letter because it and Nagoya are inseparable. One of the golden dolphins standing on the topmost roof of the castle, throwing its sparkling beams for miles around, which one passing Nagoya even by railway can never miss, would be worth more than a million yen, if its gold were melted into bullion and sold at par. The castle's artistic and historical value is immense, not to be counted in coin of the realm. One naturally wonders why so much good gold was used in making such an apparently useless ornamentation on top of a castle meant for defense and war. That is part of history and would carry us far beyond the scope of a book of this nature. Suffice it to say that it was a work of love and devotion of one Katō Kiyomasa, a name to remember in Japanese history, to please the first Tokugawa Shōgun, Ieyasu, or perhaps, to please himself. More than twenty "outside" daimyō had been ordered to share the burden of this work, and though the others, especially a doughty lord like Fukushima, grumbled ferociously, Kiyomasa made it his own work and went out of his way to do the most difficult and expensive part of it, and into the bargain added these two golden dolphins. He spent a sum large enough to represent, it is said, the three years' revenues of his great feudatory, which would amount in current coinage to tens of million yen. The dolphin, the fabulous fish, was said to have a talismanic virtue against fires, and the golden dolphins of Nagoya have certainly done their duty. For, while one or two mishaps have occurred to the dolphins themselves, the castle itself has remained unharmed by fire or war.

True that Nagoya had some pretension to civic prosperity even in the middle ages, but it was from the date of the Castle that its prosperity definitely began.

And the first place to visit in Nagoya is still the Castle. To walk on the clean-swept, spacious gravelpaths between the outer and the inner moats is an inspiration--it makes one forget the present and live in a charmed sphere of romance and heroism. The donjon soaring high, fresh and majestic in its sweeping outline, stands just as it did three centuries ago, and in its grand, mysterious way, seems to tell tales of pathos and mystery at which one never ceases to wonder. As the visitor goes up its wooden stairways, one after another, rising higher, ever higher, above the city level, to an ever-widening view of the surrounding plains, he is struck with the sense of its magnificence, and wonders at the real motive which may have inspired its master builder. Was Kiyomasa a cowardly knight who, after the death of his best friend and master, Hideyoshi, sought his own advantages in the new régime under Ieyasu, the arch enemy of his late Lord? Or did he work for the sake of the work itself, as a true artist is said to do always? Whatever the explanation, the mystery is part of the great story which the Castle itself tells to all who will gaze upon it.

Osaka Ancient Memories

Osaka is too preoccupied with the actualities of the present moment and the prospects of the immediate future to look back upon the past. Yet it is one of the most ancient cities, boasting of an honorable place in the hoariest Japanese national records. It is in a way very much older than Kyoto, or even Nara, and the scenes of the cultural history of Japan are largely laid in this city. Here it was that Chikamatsu wrote his immortal plays for the puppet shows of the Bunraku; and the scores of artists, scholars and dilettanti, served to make the golden age of Genroku what it was. Further back in history Osaka had the honor of being the political capital of Hideyoshi the Conqueror, who, in 1583-85, built his castle home which remains in almost the same shape as it was 300 years ago. Going further back the great Tennōji (properly Shi-ten-nō-ji, or temple of four Buddhist saints) was built by Shōtoku Taishi ( 572-612 A.D.), the Constantine of Japan, to whom the credit of establishing Buddhism as a national religion is attributed. Still earlier in the records is the famous anecdote of Nintoku Tenno (16th Emperor, 313-399 A.D.), a Mikado of great tenderness of heart and wonderful practical statesmanship, who, as the story goes, observing the conditions of poverty among his people, declared a tax-holiday for three years. He did not allow his officers to re-impose the taxes till one morning, on going to the roof of his palace and seeing the smoke rising from every house, he made the celebrated remark: "I have become rich." Turning to the courtier who wondered at his remark, seeing that the Emperor's clothes were shabby and his palace dilapidated, Nintoku added, "the wealth of the people is the wealth of their sovereign." The site of Takatsuno-miya temple has been identified as the spot where Nintoku's palace stood, and from whose roof he looked down on Osaka's smoke of prosperity. But the forest of chimneys bristling everywhere, today remain as so many symbols of Nintoku's virtues.

In studying Osaka from an historical and cultural point of view one will see a long vista of interests open to his view, and will soon be convinced that the arts and literature of Japan, even as they are, owe their perfection in no small degree to the influences of Osaka's so-called material civilization.

By far the greatest attraction of Osaka, from a tourist's viewpoint, is that it is so near to many lovely cities and interesting places, within a few hours by motor or train, such as Kyoto (26 miles), Kobe (20 miles), Nara (18.8 miles) and a host of others celebrated for their exquisite scenery and historical associations. Osaka's notoriety therefore as an ideal city to get away from rests largely on this fact. There are, to mention a few more, Mount Rokkō whose summit, 3,000 ft. high, commands a fairy-like view of the Inland Sea. Here is a foreign villa plus a bijou hotel. Arima (23 miles) is a famous spa in the mountains, whose waters claim to have the cure-all, cardinal virtues. Takarazuka, another fashionable hot-spring resort within an hour's ride of Osaka, is also noted for its Takarazuka musical shows and modern revues performed exclusively by charming young actresses. Then there is Yoshino (40 miles), whose cherry blossoms have been woven into the texture of national history, and Wakayama (40 miles) celebrated for its wonderful land and seascapes. No wonder that the Osaka people, unlike the Kyotoites, are insatiable excursionists, holiday-makers and "go. outers."