Nijo Castle (Nijōjō) was built in 1603 as the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period (1603-1867). After the Tokugawa Shogunate fell in 1867, Nijo Castle was used as an imperial palace for a while before being donated to the city and opened up to the public as a historic site. The castle area has several gardens and groves of cherry and plum trees. The Ninomaru garden was designed by the famous landscape architect and tea master, Kobori Enshu. It is located between the two main rings of fortifications, next to the Ninomaru palace

Nijō Castle is a flatland castle in Kyoto, Japan. The castle consists of two concentric rings (Kuruwa) of fortifications, the Ninomaru Palace, the ruins of the Honmaru Palace, various support buildings and several gardens. It is one of the seventeen Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which have been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site

The Honmaru

The Ninomaru

The Seiryu-en garden

Nijo Castle can be divided into three areas: the Honmaru (main circle of defense), the Ninomaru and some gardens that encircle the Honmaru and Ninomaru

The Seiryu-en garden

The Tonan Sumiyagura (Southeast Corner Tower) built in about 1603 of the Edo Period, has been designated as an Important cultural property

The moat outside of historic Nijo Castle in Kyoto

When this castle was built, there were four corner towers in this castle

However, the two of these

disappeared by the great Kyoto’s fire of the Tenmei

Era in 1788

The second corner tower

Just outside the Ninomaru Palace is the lovely strolling pond garden titled simply as “The Ninomaru Garden”. The Ninomaru Garden was designed by famous landscape architect and tea master Kobori Enshu (1579-1647). Because this garden is designed to be able to look from 8 directions, it is also called ‘Hachijin-no-niwa (the garden of eight positions)’

 In 2006, the American

magazine Journal of Japanese Gardening

ranked Ninomaru Garden 8th out of 731 gardens all

over Japan

Nothing in a Japanese garden is natural or left to

chance; each plant is chosen

according to aesthetic

principles, either to hide

undesirable sights, to serve

as a backdrop to certain garden features, or to

create a picturesque scene, like a landscape painting or postcard

Trees are carefully chosen and arranged for their autumn colors. Moss is often used to suggest that the garden is ancient. Flowers are also carefully chosen by their season of flowering

Some plants are chosen for their religious symbolism, such as the pine, which represents longevity

Ninomaru garden is constructed around a large central pond

decorated with a variety of stones of all shapes and

sizes,

and the pond also has three islands; Hōrai-jima (Island

of Eternal Happiness), Tsuru-jima

(Crane Island) and Kame-jima (Turtle Island)  

The main purpose of a

Japanese garden is to attempt to be

a space that captures the

natural beauties of nature

The two main principles

incorporated in a Japanese garden

are scaled reduction and symbolization

A cascade or waterfall is an

important element in Japanese gardens, a

miniature version of the waterfalls

of Japanese mountain streams

A cycadophyta (palmlike gymnosperm) is a distant relative to palm-fern commonly known as cycad

Ninomaru garden has a large pond with three islands

that symbolize Horai-San, and the crane and

turtle mountains of the Taoist mythology

Traditional Japanese

gardens have small islands in

the lakes. In sacred temple

gardens, there is usually an island

which represents Mount

Penglai or Mount Horai, the traditional home

of the Eight Immortals

The Ninomaru garden is located between the two main rings of fortifications, next to the palace of the same name

The Ninomaru garden has a large pond with three islands and features numerous carefully placed stones and topiary pine trees

The castle area has several gardens and groves of cherry and plum trees, which bloom between March and April

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over a millennium, and carries a reputation as its most beautiful city. What we are loving about Japan is the attention to detail, its delicacies in special features (gardens, food, shops), the orderliness of the community, and the humbleness and helpfulness of the people

https://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Kyoto/Kyoto/blog-914902.html

Protection of the cycads from the winter at the Ninomaru 

Japanese gardens always have

water, either a pond or stream, or,

in the dry rock garden,

represented by white sand

In Buddhist symbolism, water

and stone are the yin and yang, two opposites that complement and complete each

other

Sakuteiki is the oldest published Japanese text on garden-making. Sakuteiki is most likely the oldest garden planning text in the world. It was written in the mid-to-late 11th century

According to the Sakuteiki, the water should enter the garden from the east or southeast and flow toward the west because the east is the home of the Green Dragon (seiryu) an ancient Chinese divinity adapted in Japan, and the west is the home of the White Tiger, the divinity of the east

Water flowing from east to west will carry away evil, and the owner of the garden will be healthy and have a long life

The shores of the Ninomaru garden are lined with rocks, the number of which has seemed excessive to critics of the garden

 In contrast to Imperial gardens of the Edo Period where long stretches of shore line have no rocks, the shores of Ninomaru and other Shogunal gardens are lined with stones set virtually "shoulder to shoulder"

Text: InternetPictures: Nicoleta Leu Internet Sanda FoişoreanuCopyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foişoreanuhttps://plus.google.com/+SandaMichaela

Sound: Shigeru Umebayashi - Yumeji's Theme (In The Mood for Love) 2017