Of the more than one hundred Edo-period castle keeps, only about 40 survived the Meiji Restoration. In the years after 1868, many of these were pulled down by the fledgling Meiji government or dismantled by local patriots as undesirable relics of feudalism. Castles were so unvalued during the Meiji period that one, in western Japan, was sold for the equivalent of fifteen dollars. Castle sites, however, remained important municipal centers; the grounds of many old castles contain schools, athletic fields, parks, museums, and other public institutions. Because of World War II and other disasters, only twelve genuine castle keeps survive:
Maruoka-jō (1576)
MATSUMOTO-JŌ (ca. 1596)
Inuyama-jō (ca. 1601)
HIKONE-JŌ (1606)
HIMEJI-JŌ (1609)
MATSUE-JŌ (1611)
Marugame-jō (1660)
Uwajima-jō (1665)
BITCHŪ-MATSUYAMA-JŌ (ca. 1684)
KŌCHI-JŌ (1747)
HIROSAKI-JŌ (1810)
MATSUYAMA-JŌ (1854)
For information on visiting these architectural treasures, consult your Gateway to Japan. If you have time for just one castle, there’s no debate over which one to visit.
HIMEJI-JŌ: THE ULTIMATE JAPANESE CASTLE
Located 130 kilometers west of Kyoto (an easy Shinkansen bullet train ride), HIMEJI-JŌ was built by TOKUGAWA IEYASU's son-in-law in 1609. It is the most beautiful and militarily formidable Japanese castle in existence. Himeji-jō is a "flatland-mountain castle" with an elaborate central citadel consisting of a principal tower connected to three subsidiary ones (fig. 27). These white towers, floating like birds over the plain, have earned Himeji-jō the nickname "White Egret Castle.
The tenshu housed the lord in times of war, and had well water, ample space to store arms and provisions, and a vantage point from which to watch the enemy's movements. Though heavily armored with plaster, it was still vulnerable to bombardment and fire. The task of defending this structure fell to the moats, walls, outer guard towers and elevated passageways that surround it. Radiating out from the tenshu is a maze of fortified corridors and parapets, where soldiers could position themselves to fire on the enemy. The citadel stands atop huge stone palisades which, although built steeply, are slanted slightly to protect against erosion. The corners and other more vulnerable places along the palisade are protected by ishi-otoshi (rock chutes), designed to send an avalanche of stones—and sometimes boiling oil—down on any invaders attempting to scale them.
The entrance to the keep is a classic ambush. The approach, a long series of stairs, doubles back on itself as it zigzags up the palisade. In the walls above each switchback are loopholes—tall, narrow openings for arrows and round or triangular ones for firearms—from which defending soldiers could fire on the pursuing enemy. If, under this barrage of arrows and bullets, the enemy nevertheless advanced, the defenders needed only to retreat to the next higher switchback and continue firing.
Masugata gate
Himeji-jō's labyrinthine approach, through a series of twisting passages, narrow gates, and ambushes, provided an exceptionally formidable defense. Most castles made do with somewhat simpler devices, such as the masugata gate. This gate consisted of two portals placed at right angles to each other in the walls of a box-shaped courtyard. The first portal was narrow, sometimes incorporating a dip, to block the view of the interior. If an enemy charged this gate, he would have to turn ninety degrees and try to breach the heavily fortified second gate while trapped in the cramped courtyard, with defenders shooting at him from all directions; especially lethal was the squad of sharpshooters firing down from the upper story of the second portal. The Sakurada gate of the TOKYO IMPERIAL PALACE (formerly Edo-jō) is a fine example of this style. Ironically, because of the 250-year peace imposed by the Tokugawa shoguns, neither this gate nor the elaborate defenses of Himeji-jō were ever put to the test of battle.
