Tokugawa Ieyasu Mausoleum / Okusha was added to Your Favorites!
Nikko NP, Tochigi
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A Korean embassy’s 1643 gift set still has a place before Ieyasu’s tomb: a vase, lion-shaped incense burner and crane-and-tortoise candlestick. The originals were lost in an 1812 fire; today’s set is a later copy.
A 1966 conservation study says Okusha was normally closed, with worship access allowed only every 50 years. The 350th-anniversary observance in 1965 finally let researchers sample the air there.
Okusha’s Kanaesugi is believed to grant wishes, and it was already standing when Tōshō-gū was built in 1617. Its exact age is unknown; no one knows when people began praying at its hollow or when its top was lost.
The climb to Okusha follows 207 stone steps, each made from a single slab. Even the bordering stone rails were hollowed from solid blocks—a remarkable bit of stonework along the forest path.
Ieyasu’s tomb tower has had three very different forms: wood in 1622, stone from 1641, and cast bronze after an earthquake toppled the stone version. The present tower dates to 1683.
Because Ieyasu’s remains lie beneath the tower, builders sloped the paving to shed rainwater. They joined the base stones and surrounding stonework with iron clamps and wedges, then sealed the joints with poured lead.
According to Nikkō’s official tourism guide, Ieyasu’s sacred coffin is kept inside the tomb tower and has never been opened since the tower was established—a remarkable secret held in plain sight.
The cast-metal Inukimon guards the approach to Ieyasu’s tomb. Its frame was made in a single mold, with only the doors cast separately—an unusually ambitious piece of seventeenth-century metalwork.
