Himeji Castle is the archetypal Japanese fortress and the silhouette of its five storied keep is world famous. The fourteenth century building is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Visiting
The castle is easily reached by train and is about a ten minute walk from the station. There is also a large car park just in front of the castle. Allow a full day to visit the castle and the surrounding parkland with its Art Museum, gardens and shrines.
My Experience
We woke up on the Wednesday to rain, which was joyous as we had an all day trip to Himeji Castle booked. We took the shuttle to the station and met the tour, just us and a Canadian family. We boarded the excellent Shinkansen train and soon arrived in Himeji.
It was a short walk in heavy rain to the castle but the group walked so damned slowly that I was soaked before reaching the castle. The rain was so heavy there wasn’t much point in touring the grounds so we went into the keep.
This had been renovated recently and the interior was all of wood. I don’t know whether their siegecraft was just crap but the castles here all seem pretty pathetic. The keep had 5 levels and was a purely defensive structure, the lord living elsewhere in the castle. The stairs were very steep and the interior bare of decoration. You had to remove your shoes before going in and there was a very organised route.
The views from the top were impressive, it certainly did command the area. We left the castle and the guide suggested a walk in the gardens to kill time before lunch but I couldn’t be arsed due to the rain. We took the train back to Kyoto on our own – the other part of the tour was a visit to the suspension bridge but when we passed it the weather was so poor you couldn’t even see the second support column!
Photo Gallery
History
“Himeji Castle’s construction dates to 1333, when a fort was constructed on Himeyama hill by Akamatsu Norimura, the ruler of the ancient Harima Province. In 1346, his son Sadanori demolished this fort and built Himeyama Castle in its place. In 1545, the Kuroda clan was stationed here by order of the Kodera clan, and feudal ruler Kuroda Shigetaka remodeled the castle into Himeji Castle, completing the work in 1561. In 1580, Kuroda Yoshitaka presented the castle to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and in 1581 Hideyoshi significantly remodeled the castle, building a three-story keep with an area of about 55 m2 (590 sq ft).
Following the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu granted Himeji Castle to his son-in-law, Ikeda Terumasa, as a reward for his help in battle. Ikeda demolished the three-story keep that had been created by Hideyoshi, and completely rebuilt and expanded the castle from 1601 to 1609, adding three moats and transforming it into the castle complex that is seen today. The expenditure of labor involved in this expansion is believed to have totaled 2.5 million man-days. Ikeda died in 1613, passing the castle to his son, who also died three years later. In 1617, Honda Tadamasa and his family inherited the castle, and Honda added several buildings to the castle complex, including a special tower for his daughter-in-law, Princess Sen (千姫, Senhime).
In the Meiji Period (1868 to 1912), many Japanese castles were destroyed. Himeji Castle was abandoned in 1871 and some of the castle corridors and gates were destroyed to make room for Japanese army barracks. The entirety of the castle complex was slated to be demolished by government policy, but it was spared by the efforts of Nakamura Shigeto, an army colonel. A stone monument honoring Nakamura was placed in the castle complex within the first gate, the Hishi Gate (菱の門, Hishinomon). Although Himeji Castle was spared, Japanese castles had become obsolete and their preservation was costly.
When the han feudal system was abolished in 1871, Himeji Castle was put up for auction. The castle was purchased by a Himeji resident for 23 Japanese yen (about 200,000 yen or US$2,258 today). The buyer wanted to demolish the castle complex and develop the land, but the cost of destroying the castle was estimated to be too great, and it was again spared.
Himeji was heavily bombed in 1945, at the end of World War II, and although most of the surrounding area was burned to the ground, the castle survived intact. One firebomb was dropped on the top floor of the castle but failed to explode. In order to preserve the castle complex, substantial repair work was undertaken starting in 1956, with a labor expenditure of 250,000 man-days and a cost of 550 million yen. In January 1995, the city of Himeji was substantially damaged by the Great Hanshin earthquake, but Himeji Castle again survived virtually undamaged, demonstrating remarkable earthquake resistance. Even the bottle of sake placed on the altar at the top floor of the keep remained in place.”
References
The Wikipedia page is here and the history above is copied from that page.
Information on visiting Himeji Castle can be found here