UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Exploring Kansai I – Kyoto
For those of you who skipped History of Japan 101 here are some highlights: Kyoto, which sets on the West coast of the main island of Honshu, was once the capital of Japan. The shogun Tokogawa moved the capital to Edo around 1600. Edo was renamed Tokyo around 1868 when the Imperial family regained control [...]
Nikko is Nippon
Nikko, in case you don’t know, has roughly three claims to fame: a Buddhist, a shogun, and three monkeys. OK, here you go, the quick and dirty history lesson: At some point in the mid-eighth century some dude named Shodo Shonin established a Buddhist training center just up the mountain from the town of Nikko.
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Chamerberlain plays witness to a fictionalized account of Tokugawa’s rise to power and his ultimate uniting of Japan, thus ushering in the Tokogawa Shogunate and the Edo period, which would last for roughly 200 years.
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One of the panels is the pictorial representation of the Buddhist maxim of “Hear no evil, Speak no evil, See no evil.” This is believed to be the earliest pictorial representation of this maxim using monkeys.
