Ninomaru Palace: Uguisubari Chirping Floors and Kano School Murals

Why is it significant?

Step quietly in your stockinged feet along the polished wooden corridors of Ninomaru Palace and listen to the floorboards beneath your toes. With every single step you take, the wood emits a rhythmic, melodic chirping sound resembling the song of Japanese bush warblers.

Key Facts

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Step quietly in your stockinged feet along the polished wooden corridors of Ninomaru Palace and listen to the floorboards beneath your toes. With every single step you take, the wood emits a rhythmic, melodic chirping sound resembling the song of Japanese bush warblers. These are the celebrated uguisubari, or nightingale floors, an ingenious medieval security alarm constructed with metal brackets beneath the planks that rub against iron clamps when weight is applied, alerting bodyguards to assassins. The melodic rhythm accompanies you from chamber to chamber like living birdsong. Take your time walking along the outer edge of the corridor to feel the smooth, tactile grain of the polished cedar planks beneath your feet.

Wander slowly past the succession of tatami reception chambers, arranged in an ascending sequence of exclusivity known as the Buke-zukuri warrior palace style. In the grand Ohiroma First Chamber, gaze through the wooden balustrades at the elevated dais where the shogun sat in solitary majesty. It was in this very hall on November ninth, eighteen sixty-seven, that the fifteenth and final shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, announced the restoration of imperial rule, bringing two and a half centuries of samurai dominance to an end.

Look at the breathtaking sliding-screen murals, or fusuma-e, that coat the chamber walls in shimmering gold leaf. Painted in sixteen twenty-six by Kano Tanyu and master artists of the Kano school, the paintings depict colossal pine trees, prowling tigers, and predatory hawks with piercing eyes, designed to overwhelm visiting daimyo warlords with the unyielding military power of the Tokugawa.

Notice how the tigers are depicted with rounded, leopard-like spots and cat-like paws. Because live tigers did not exist in seventeenth-century Japan, Kano artists based their paintings entirely on imported dried pelts and vivid travel legends, infusing the beasts with supernatural ferocity. Because live tigers did not exist in seventeenth-century Japan, Kano artists based their paintings entirely on imported dried pelts and vivid travel legends.

Step out through the palace veranda and gaze upon the rugged boulders of the Ninomaru Garden.