October 12, 2025
Day 40 — Nikko
Once again I seem to be the one having to detail our day off at an incomprehensibly beautiful World Heritage site.
Nikko is the site of an enormous temple complex that is deeply connected to the Tokugawa Shogunate and Edo period. It has an astonishing 103 religious structures connected to several larger Shinto and Buddhist temple sites. It was the spiritual heart of the Tokugawa Shogunate, served as the summer residence for the Emperor and his family, and contains the mausoleums of both the first and third Tokugawa Emperors. It is both a world heritage site, containing works of architectural genius and historical importance, and a national park as the temples are nestled in a beautiful natural setting.
The site itself is quite large, and is a challenge to see in a single day. The three main sites are the Buddhist temple of Rinno-ji, and the Shinto shrines of Toshugo and Futarasan-jinja. Toshugo contains the mausoleum of the first Tokugawa Emperor, and was the main spiritual site for the subsequent Tokugawa emperors. Futarasan-jinja, founded in the 8th century also contains the mausoleum of the third Tokugawa emperor.
We spent the first few hours visiting and exploring Rinnoji and Futarasan-jinja. These exquisite temples were nestled within a lush natural setting, surrounded by enormous cypress and Japanese cedars. The temples themselves will defy my efforts at description. Once again, I have added a number of photos to do that work.
We then turned our attention to Toshugo, which is the principal draw for most visitors. Too late we realized that this was a mistake, and should have done this the other way around. Toshugo is one of the many sites suffering from overwhelming tourist attention, and was crushed by visitors now that it was midday. Worse, we had unluckily come on a holiday weekend in Japan, which also coincided with holidays in China and Korea. Soooo many tour buses.
The lineup for tickets for Toshugo stretched several hundred metres. We decided to brave it — we were here after all, and we would be disappointed not to see all the main elements of the site. Once inside, the crowd was shuffled through the site step by step. It was all a bit nuts. The temple and mausoleum were amazing, however the experience of it was exhausting. Again, I will let photos do the work here, as my descriptive efforts will be lacking.
We had left our hotel a little after 8 and returned 6 hours later, completely templed out and more exhausted than if we had had a big day on the bikes.
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