Hozomon Gate Night View

If you will ask "where to travel in Tokyo?", probably the most frequent answer you will get is the Senso-ji Temple from Asakusa, and rightly so... The oldest temple in Tokyo, Senso-ji is also one of my favorite places, a place I visit with great pleasure every time I visit Tokyo.

Like I wrote a few years ago, I like to visit Senso-ji at night and I always stop to take some pictures... Here is one of the gates, the one located right in front of the main hall, Hozomon Gate, also called Niomon Gate because of its two Nio guardians. As I said, Senso-ji is the oldest temple in Tokyo and the first gate here was built by a samurai, Taira no Kinmasa (Taira was a major samurai clan) in 942, about 300 years after the temple was established.

Like many other constructions, the Hozomon Gate was also destroyed many times, but it was always reconstructed by powerful rulers or donors. The gate before the one we see today was built by Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1649 and lasted until 1945, when was destroyed during the World War II. The today's gate was built with money donated by the founder of the New Otani Hotel, Yonetaro Otani.