Sunny Day at the Imperial Palace

Hi everybody,

It appears to be my fate in life to visit the Imperial Palace when the gardens are closed.  Alas, perhaps I should just accept it

It's actually very common for museum or other sites of interest to be closed on Mondays and Fridays.  Why this is, we can all speculate with equal ignorance.  I learned this fact the last time I tried to visit the Imperial Gardens, when I was here last year.  So this time, I came prepared, or at least I came on a Tuesday.  Only to remember that when Monday is a National Holiday, such as yesterday which was National Respect Your Elders Day (no seriously, did everyone remember to respect an elder?) the museum/gardens/whatever are open for the holiday but closed the next day.  Foiled again!

That's ok, I still got a few pictures :D

One of the main gates, shuttered for the day

If I were a swan, I'd pick the Imperial Moat to live in as well

A popular path for joggers--the perimeter of the moat is almost exactly five kilometers (sixteen foot-pounds, I believe)

But seriously, that's a hell of a moat

Speaking of moat.  Now, I'm a big fan of the moat as an architectural feature, but I accept that in today's day and age it's out of reach for all but the most luxurious of homes (reason #35,266 why I hate Tom Brady.  It has koi in it!  Ugh I hate that man).  But the funny part is that, for the Imperial Palace, the addition of the moat has about as much practical use as Brady.  More serious students of Japanese history can correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know no one has ever attacked the Imperial Palace.  No one has ever even considered it in the millennia that the Emperor has existed (and yes, I know that this particular edifice has only been the Imperial Residence for like a century and a half, I'm speaking in broader terms)

There has been civil war many, many times, but ever since its establishment over two and a half millenia ago, the Emperor has almost always stood above.  When the warlords fought across Japan, it was only to have the right to be acknowledged as the sovereign military ruler by the Emperor

This is not to say that the Emperor has always ruled supreme, quite the opposite.  There have been centuries-long eras in which the Emperor was little more than a figurehead besi the Shogun, or military leader, of Japan.  And yet, even if that acknowledgment was a mere formality because the Emperor would have been a fool to withhold it, the Shogun still needed the endorsement of the Emperor  (Portuguese missionaries once described the Emperor and Shogun as similar to the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, if you want a Western analogy)

In fact, the comparison to the Pope is a solid one--no matter how much we fight beneath him, only the truly godless Muslims or Mongols (in this analogy, the Chinese or Americans I suppose) would ever actually attack the Pope.  He's, you know, the Pope

Anyways, my point is that it seems kind of silly to have such a strictly defensive structure as a moat around a building that pretty much every warrior in all of Japan would die before allowing to be attacked.  But hey, I'm not complaining.  As discussed above, I like moats!

Plus, I assume that in a time of National Emergency this dude would come to life and defeat any invading armies merely by glaring at them

Noah out