Recently I found myself with a Saturday afternoon free, so I decided to head off to do some hiking around Yamakita, in western Kanagawa Prefecture. On the way, however, while changing trains in Kozu, I found a map of…
Osaka Castle: Home of Toyotomi
It is 1583. Oda Nobunaga has been assassinated, and Nobunga’s right hand man, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, has avenged his death and is in the process of consolidating his own power. Of course, the aspiring ruler needed a palace worthy of…
Shameless Self-Promotion
Greetings everyone. Dave Hansche here with an update on goings on here at Wayfarer Daves. First, Wayfarer Daves now has its own Instagram. Follow us for daily photos from our travels, alternate images not used in our…
Getting Around in Japan
By Dave Hansche We do a lot of articles here at Wayfarer Daves about Japan. Both of us currently live in Japan and for myself, my photography has been almost exclusively done in Japan. Most of the travel I’ve…
The Merchants of Takayama
Over New Years this last year, the other Dave and I spent the holidays, as we often do, traveling around Japan together. This year’s main target was the stunningly beautiful village of Shirakawa-go in northern Gifu. Along the way,…
The Fall of Kamakura
In my last article, we talked about the rise of the Genpei wars and the rise of the first true military government of Japan, the Shogunate, or Bafuku. This week, I want to fast forward and look at the…
Genpei – Rise of the Shoguns
The court is in turmoil. The child Emperor has died, leaving no heirs. The two most powerful noble families each have their favorite successor. The head of one family serves has served as chancellor for the last twenty years after…
An Adventure in the Retelling.
I read or heard a quote a while back. I don’t recall where I saw it or where it originally came from, but it has been knocking around my head a lot lately. The saying, as I recall it,…
Finding History – Ishibashiyama
A party of samurai camped on a mountainside south of modern day Odawara, answering the call to rise up against the Taira clan who had seized power and replaced the reigning emperor with a puppet of their own bloodline.…
Nagoya Castle: History Lost and Regained
This week, in between Mr. Krigbaum’s articles on WWII in The Philippines, I will go back to talking about castles here in Japan. Nagoya Castle is a grand reconstructed castle a couple of hours south of Tokyo by shinkansen with…