The castle built in Nagoya by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu had golden shachi (kinshachi), made with a wooden core with copper plates covered in gold. After the Meiji Restoration, when the castle was put on the demolition list, its golden shachi were sent to various expositions in Japan, and one of them was sent to the the World Exposition that took place in Vienna, in 1873.
After the castle was saved from demolition, the kinshachi were reinstalled on the roof, but they were destroyed together with the castle during the bombings of the WWII.
Today, the reconstructed Nagoya castle features two kinshachi, actually made of gold, having together about 90 kilograms of 18 carat gold. And if you visit Nagoya, you can see them represented on some of the city’s manhole covers, of course next to the castle.
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Yesterday’s Japan Photo:Traditional Japanese craft, Temari |
