Watch the Seasons Unfold on a Photographic Journey Through Nikko, Japan

With a name that means ‘sunlight’, the town of Nikko in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, is intimately bound to the seasons, its shifting landscapes and treasured shrines drawing in pilgrims and travellers over the centuries.

A line of moss-covered Buddha statues, each wearing a bright read bib and headband in a forest.
Nikko has a UNESCO-listed complex of two shrines and a temple that change in appearance as the seasons pass.
Mark Parren Taylor
Story and photographs byMark Parren Taylor
Published September 20, 2026
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
An elderly Japanese man dressed in a traditional, colourful kimono playing the drums.
In April, nature-lovers and culture hunters converge on mountainous, cedar-forested Nikko National Park for the Yayoi Festival, which is more than 1,200 years old. Held in Futarasan Shrine, this event celebrates the arrival of spring with processions and musical performances.
Mark Parren Taylor
An ancient wooden shrine in Japan surrounded by trees.
A close-up of a golden Japanese wood carved painting.
From the end of the 19th century, Japan’s emperors would arrive in summer — when the heat in Tokyo is stifling — to spend the season at their residence, Tamozawa Imperial Villa, cooled by the mountain breeze.
Mark Parren Taylor (Top) (Left) and Mark Parren Taylor (Bottom) (Right)
A pebble stoned walkway through a forest leading to a shrine.
The imperial family stopped using the villa in 1947 — it’s now a museum with 106 rooms, known for being one of Japan’s largest wooden buildings.
Mark Parren Taylor
A forest path with stepping stones leading the way past twisting trees.
In September, Nikko’s Unesco-listed complex of two shrines and a temple, arranged on the mountain slopes, is ablaze with the green, bronze and gold of the changing foliage.
Mark Parren Taylor
A serene pond from the terrace of a shrine, overlooking swooping trees with golden foliage.
A close-up of a buddha-like bronze statue holding up a round tool.
The autumn colours are out in Shoyo-en, once the private garden of a high-ranking monk at the Buddhist temple, Nikkosan Rinnoji.
Mark Parren Taylor (Top) (Left) and Mark Parren Taylor (Bottom) (Right)
The golden and embellished facade of a Japanese temple shot from below the roof.
Also part of the complex is the intricately carved 17th-century Toshogu Shrine, which holds the tomb of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a powerful shogun who ruled Japan for more than 250 years.
Mark Parren Taylor
A bowl of udon with mountain vegetables and a tofu skin curd.
Nikko’s cuisine reflects the season’s earthy colours, particularly local speciality yuba (soy milk skin), served with udon noodles and mountain vegetables.
Mark Parren Taylor
An icy, frozen-over lake landscape bordering hills.
From December, a freeze from the north grips the region. Nikko’s snow-clad mountains are home to several ice farms, where great slabs of spring-water ice are formed and then stored in hay-insulated sheds.
Mark Parren Taylor
A bartender pouring a drink with strawberries into a cocktail glass.
Some of that ice heads to the bar at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the national park, chilling a Japanese whisky or a cocktail made with regional strawberries.
Mark Parren Taylor
The sleek interiors of a bar with floor-length windows revealing an icy forest.
A glass of clear sake next to two bottles on a wooden table.
The region’s rice-based sake is also best brewed in winter, with the icy air resulting in a long, slow fermentation. Award-winning examples can be enjoyed at family-run Watanabe Sahei brewery in downtown Nikko.
Mark Parren Taylor (Top) (Left) and Mark Parren Taylor (Bottom) (Right)
An arched bridge leading over a coursing river with a frosty mountain landscape in the background.
Within the national park, Chuzenji is the country’s highest natural lake and the source of the Daiya River, which thunders through Nikko on its way south. Boulders along its course are frosted with snow in winter, but the river runs too fast to freeze. It rushes past the Tamozawa Imperial Villa, slowing only as it reaches the Watanabe Sahei sake brewery, whose well it feeds. The vermillion-hued Shinkyo Bridge makes a suitably grand entrance to Nikko’s Unesco-listed shrines and temples, carrying pedestrians over the inky water. Built in 1636, the bridge belongs to Futarasan Shrine — which waits for the Yayoi Festival to return in spring.
Mark Parren Taylor
Published in the October 2026 issue by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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