The Shrines of Nikko and Ornamental Architecture

in his book on Edo Architecture writes that "it is truly an exhilarating experience to stand before the Yomei-mon gate of the Toshogu Shrine at Nikko, surrounde by a crowd of visitors and listen to the exclamations of wonder evoked by the majesty of the buildings".'Although Professor Okawa doesn't mention ornament as being implicated in this reaction, it is logical to conclude from what he says further on when comparing Nikko with the Katsura Imperial Villa, this latter as embodying "unscathed nature; where decorative painting and are virtually nonexistent", while the former, Nikko, is an "architecture replete with teeming sculptures of dragons, flowers, and birds", that ornament is conclusive when experiencing both architectures.Okawa is not alone in this inference; all historians whether Japanese or otherwise, when writing about the Shrines of Nikko, inevitably refer to their ornamental character.2This designation, while in principle not erroneous, nevertheless converts Nikko into a particular case within Japanes Classical architecture, and often the cause of ccensure among Western historians, starting from James Fergusson's observation of "the great decadence which had taken place in the style"3 to Taut's (in)famous dismissal as inconsequential4.Furthermore this uniqueness is frequently correlated by historians, as manner of justification, to Western ornamental architecture, including Professor Okawa who describes the Tosho-gu as containing" varicolored, heavy, and exaggerated decoration, which some liken to the Western Baroquee"5, or Noritake Tsuda's analysis of the Yomei-mon gate, whose resplendent surface "represent what we call the Rococo style of Japanese architecture"6.Both propositions are accurate: its ornamental character and the association with the Baroque, or more specifically the Spanish Ultra-Baroque or Churrigueresque architecture.Although, evidently no possible historical or cultural reciprocity exists between Nikko and the Churrigueresque, their visual affinity is undeniable and, it should be added, not coincidential.The similarity lies in what is mutually inherent: ornament.Not the actual ornament employed, whose formal language and motifs are distinct to each architecture or even less to Riegl-like evolutionary proposition 7. Their parallelism is based on the role that ornament plays in both architectures.But to deduce what is common in the ornament of Nikko and, for instance, in a paradigmatic example of the Churrigueresque like the Monastery of San Martin 1-66