A Spanish clock has been ticking for over four centuries on a mountainside overlooking Suruga Bay. The timepiece arrived in 1611 as a diplomatic gift from Philip III of Spain, carried by the explorer Sebastian Vizcaino to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord who had just unified Japan after generations of civil war. When Ieyasu died five years later, his son ordered the body carried to the top of Mount Kuno, a 216-meter peak so steep it had served as both a Buddhist monastery and a fortress. The shrine built over his grave became the first of the Toshogu shrines -- sanctuaries dedicated to the deified spirit of the man who founded a dynasty that would rule Japan for over 250 years. That original shrine, the Kunozan Toshogu, still stands on the mountainside above the bay, its black lacquer and gold leaf blazing against the dark cedar forests of Suruga.
Long before Tokugawa Ieyasu claimed it, Mount Kuno had a spiritual history stretching back more than a thousand years. A Buddhist temple occupied the summit as early as the Nara period, the eighth century. During the Kamakura period, the famous prelate Enni made the mountain famous for something unexpected: he introduced the cultivation of green tea to the slopes of Suruga Province, a tradition that still defines the region. The terraced tea fields below Mount Kuno remain among the most productive in Japan. When the warlord Takeda Shingen conquered Suruga in the sixteenth century, he recognized the mountain's strategic value and converted the temple site into a fortified mountain castle. After the Takeda clan fell, Suruga passed to the Tokugawa, and Ieyasu maintained those fortifications throughout his retirement at nearby Sunpu Castle. The mountain that had served monks and warriors for centuries was about to gain its most famous purpose.
Tokugawa Ieyasu died on June 1, 1616, at Sunpu Castle, at the age of seventy-three. His son and successor, Tokugawa Hidetada, ordered his father's remains carried to the top of Mount Kuno and buried there, fulfilling Ieyasu's own wishes. The first shrine buildings went up that same year. The Honden and Heiden -- the main hall and the offering hall -- were completed in 1617, built in the flamboyant Azuchi-Momoyama style: black lacquer surfaces covered with elaborate polychromatic carvings and generous applications of gold leaf. The third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, later relocated his grandfather's grave to the more extravagant Nikko Toshogu in Tochigi Prefecture, but a portion of Ieyasu's deified spirit was held to remain on Mount Kuno. The original shrine was never abandoned. Instead, it was maintained with care by the administrators of Sunpu Castle for the entire Edo period, a quiet counterpart to Nikko's grandeur.
The shrine's museum holds a remarkable collection of personal items that once belonged to Ieyasu himself. Among them are tachi -- traditional Japanese longswords -- including one designated a National Treasure of Japan, alongside twelve other blades classified as Important Cultural Properties. Two suits of samurai armor sit alongside a more intimate artifact: the pair of eyeglasses Ieyasu wore in his later years. The Spanish clock from Vizcaino remains one of the collection's most prized objects, a testament to the earliest diplomatic exchanges between Japan and Europe. Seventy-three documents in Ieyasu's own handwriting are preserved here, offering direct evidence of the shogun's meticulous, hands-on approach to governance. The shrine buildings themselves received Important Cultural Property designation in 1908. In 2010, the Honden and Heiden were elevated to National Treasure status, recognizing them as among the finest surviving examples of Azuchi-Momoyama period architecture in Japan.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 brought the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate and the separation of Buddhism from Shinto across Japan. For a shrine dedicated to the deified spirit of the Tokugawa founder, the new era was perilous. Kunozan Toshogu lost several structures and much of its revenue as the new government dismantled the institutions of Tokugawa power. Yet the shrine survived, in part because its artistry and antiquity transcended politics. Today, fourteen structures are protected as Important Cultural Properties, and the entire mountain is designated a National Historic Site. The three great unifiers of Japan -- Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu -- are now all enshrined here as kami, their spirits sharing the mountaintop. The main festival takes place each April 17, but the spring festival on February 17 and 18 draws larger crowds, pilgrims climbing the steep stone steps through cedar groves to reach the shrine where Japan's most consequential dynasty began.
Located at 34.96N, 138.47E on the steep slopes of Mount Kuno (216 meters), directly overlooking Suruga Bay on the southeastern coast of Honshu. From altitude, the shrine complex is nestled in dense forest on a promontory jutting into the bay, distinguishable by the cleared mountaintop area among surrounding green canopy. Mt. Fuji Shizuoka Airport (RJNS) lies approximately 20 nautical miles to the southwest. Shizuhama Air Base is closer, roughly 5 nautical miles to the west. Best viewed at 3,000-5,000 feet AGL approaching from over Suruga Bay. Mount Fuji dominates the northern horizon in clear weather.