But Not In Any One Of These Gorgeous Shrines Did Iyeyasu Decree
That His Dust Should Rest.
Re-entering the last court, it is
necessary to leave the enclosures altogether by passing through a
covered gateway in the eastern piazza into a stone gallery, green
with mosses and hepaticae.
Within, wealth and art have created a
fairyland of gold and colour; without, Nature, at her stateliest,
has surrounded the great Shogun's tomb with a pomp of mournful
splendour. A staircase of 240 stone steps leads to the top of the
hill, where, above and behind all the stateliness of the shrines
raised in his honour, the dust of Iyeyasu sleeps in an unadorned
but Cyclopean tomb of stone and bronze, surmounted by a bronze urn.
In front is a stone table decorated with a bronze incense-burner, a
vase with lotus blossoms and leaves in brass, and a bronze stork
bearing a bronze candlestick in its mouth. A lofty stone wall,
surmounted by a balustrade, surrounds the simple but stately
enclosure, and cryptomeria of large size growing up the back of the
hill create perpetual twilight round it. Slant rays of sunshine
alone pass through them, no flower blooms or bird sings, only
silence and mournfulness surround the grave of the ablest and
greatest man that Japan has produced.
Impressed as I had been with the glorious workmanship in wood,
bronze, and lacquer, I scarcely admired less the masonry of the
vast retaining walls, the stone gallery, the staircase and its
balustrade, all put together without mortar or cement, and so
accurately fitted that the joints are scarcely affected by the
rain, damp, and aggressive vegetation of 260 years.
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