Nijo Castle

The entrance to the Ninomaru Palace is beautiful. It’s called the Kara Mon (Chinese Gate) and is decorated with gorgeously carved cranes, flowers, and butterflies as well as lions, tigers and dragons.  It is aesthetically gorgeous, making it difficult to imagine it as a fortress, yet that’s exactly what it was.  It has been speculated that either the Shogun was extremely cautious – after all, attacks were common in those days, or he was paranoid. The castle sports towers, moats (Honmaru Palace has its own inner moat), and high walls surrounding all as well as secret passageways (including a closet in the shogun’s personal bedroom so that someone would be on guard at all times) and the famous squeaking floors.

The famous Nightingale Floors were designed to creak and squeak any time anyone walked on them, whether they were barefooted or wearing padding of some sort (shoes, of course, were never worn inside anyway). Hmmm…that leads to a question…a  BIG question… I wonder what raiding samurais did when they entered a castle???

The creaking boards were created on purpose. They set the clamps in such a way that the holes in the floorboards would rub against the clamps. He actually could have saved a lot of time and money – boards exposed to wind and rain and lots of people walking on them naturally warp and start to squeak. Oh well…guess he didn’t want to wait.  It actually still squeaks to the very day, whether by design or age but still….those samurai must have been very light sleepers.