“Only Japanese,” said the voice on the other end when I phoned to book a tour of the Myoryu-ji (aka Ninja-Dera temple) in Kanazawa, Japan.
“Sorry?” I replied.
“Tour is only in Japanese,” they said.
“That’s ok,” I replied.
I had read that this was the case, but that non-Japanese speakers were given a booklet with translations about the different aspects of the tour. I thought this would suffice.
Although also called Ninja-Dera or ninja temple, it has nothing to do with ninjas. When Myoryuji was actually built isn’t clear but it was moved from the grounds of Kanazawa Castle in 1643 during the Edo period 1603-1868 when Japan was governed by the military Shogunate. Myoryuji is surrounded by temples, but it seems that this one was used as a lookout post. On the roof you can see a squat tower with windows. It’s said this was used not only as a lookout but to signal the castle in case of invaders. But the most fascinating thing about it are the hidden stairs, trapdoors, and secret floors. They were designed to foil invaders, something that seems to have been a constant threat for the shoguns, giving rise to the famous Japanese tea ceremony, developed so the shoguns could take a mindful break from their existential angst.
Whomever was constantly trying to kill the inhabitants—and indeed the inhabitants themselves—must have been very small; a modern-day military wouldn’t get in the door before they were knocked out cold by the low lintel. Inside, the passages are narrow and the ceilings low, purposely so, we were told, so the invaders couldn’t swing their swords.
I had booked for my husband and I to do the tour at nine and we assembled outside with the other participants, most of whom were Japanese, ten minutes before, as instructed. It had been snowing in the days before we arrived in Kanazawa and snow still lay on the ground and was heaped up high against the triangular entryway. It was drizzling and the temperature was in single digits.
Then a woman came out and ushered us in, instructing us to remove our shoes. Having done this, we proceeded to the check-in desk. We paid our money and were promptly handed a laminated sheet to be read there. It said there were to be no photos and no speaking. The tour would be conducted solely in Japanese and—and this was the weird thing—if we were with someone who could speak Japanese they were not allowed to translate for us during the tour. We nodded our assent and handed the sheet back to the unsmiling staff who then gave us each a plastic-sleeved folder with translations.
Myoryuji is still a place of worship for the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, a branch peculiar to Japan, originating in the 13th century. Therefore the main hall is dominated by a shrine and demanded reverence. One of the staff who showed us where to sit on the tatami floor pointed to my beanie and told me to remove it. A heater sat a couple of metres away but it made no difference to the freezing temperature inside and with feet in only socks and my head bare I began to shiver.
And there we sat for about fifteen minutes listening to a recorded introduction in Japanese, without written translation, understanding nothing, getting colder, and hoping the tour would start soon so we could at least move.
Finally we were asked to stand and led over to the first item. “Page one,” the guide said for our benefit and then proceeded to reel off a description of the grill set into the floor in the middle of the main entrance to the hall. It was ostensibly an offertory box but could be quickly converted to a trapdoor in the event of intruders. Although still quite dark inside despite modern lighting, the temple would have been much darker in its day, lit only by candles and lanterns, meaning a marauder enthusiastically running into the hall might think they were running across the offertory box but instead fall into the floor below.
Next, Page 2, our guide pointed to what was a mezzanine level glimpsed through an open sliding paper door. This was where the Lord of the temple would go to pray privately while still being able to see what what was happening in the main hall. With the panel closed no one would have realised there was a room there. And this is just one of the ways Myoryuji, although appearing to be the regulation (at the time) two storeys is in fact four, but with seven internal levels.
We then followed the guide behind the main altar, where we were instructed to turn to Page 3 and she again rattled off what seemed a much longer, more detailed explanation than the scant paragraph in our dog-eared plastic folders. After we gathered round, she knelt and removed two floorboards to reveal a set of stairs curving away into the darkness beneath, a secret escape route. For Page 4 we were led around the other side of the altar, near where we had sat at the start, and up a curving flight of stairs to a small room. From here we could look into a small courtyard containing a well around which the temple is constructed. The well was covered with a dome-shaped mesh. It is apparently 25 metres deep and is rumoured to connect to Kanazawa Castle, about a kilometre and a half away. The fact that by 2023 no one had bothered to verify this rumour suggests to me that it isn’t true, but that admitting it would detract from the temple’s mystique.
Now that we were up in a lighter room with an open window, I was able to get a good look at our guide. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her black uniform gave her a dowdy look. She rattled off the descriptions at each stop with a face totally devoid of expression; clearly she had given this tour about a million times.
At the next stop after we all filed into the space, the guide looked at me and said, “Stand here please,” her finger pointing to the spot right next to her. When I didn’t respond immediately, she repeated, “Stand here please,” jabbing her finger towards the floor, and I obediently moved to stand next to her. My husband stood next to me and the people in front sat on the floor in silence.
She then slid aside a panel to reveal another hidden staircase and reeled off the next spiel, which once again continued on long after we had read the single paragraph in our folders. And from then on it was “don’t touch” and “stand here”. I think if she could have she would have slapped me when I accidentally brushed the wall with a gloved hand when descending a staircase instead of holding onto the railing.
And then a thought occurred to me. Is she speaking to me like this because I’m not Japanese or was I being paranoid? But as the tour continued I became increasingly aware of an air of barely concealed hostility that didn’t seem to be directed towards the Japanese. Maybe she really did just hate her job. It’s not as though she smiled or spoke warmly to the Japanese either. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.
The Japanese are famously polite. Anyone who has been to Japan, or just a Japanese gyoza restaurant, knows that on entering the premises they will immediately hear an enthusiastic “Irasshaimase!”, “Welcome!”. They smile and bow and nothing is too much trouble. This was what I encountered everywhere else in Japan, but this woman from whom a cold air of loathing seemed to emanate was the opposite.
To check whether I was just being paranoid, after the tour I decided to look at the reviews on Tripadvisor. What I found was that if I were being paranoid, so were a lot of others. While most of the reviews give five out of five, many describe the unwelcoming attitude of the staff towards non-Japanese people and in some cases the difficulty they had even booking a tour. Some non-Japanese were made to show passports and visas, even those with Japanese partners.
But all this seeming refusal to accommodate non-Japanese—making us sit through a long recorded introduction we couldn’t understand while sitting in a frigid building, the way we were hurried through the place without being able to get a good look or ask questions or allow a Japanese-speaking companion to translate, making it difficult to even book a tour—was almost comically in keeping with the original purpose of the building: it was meant to keep invaders out or make it as uncomfortable as possible for them while there.
The tour ended and I sat down on the bottom step to put my shoes back on. There was a piece of timber just in front of the bottom step which I put my foot up on as I pulled on one of my boots. “Shoes off!” came a familiar voice from behind me.
A Journey to Lo Monthang 