Himeji Castle (1601): The White Heron Castle of Japan

Himeji Castle is a hilltop castle in the city of Himeji, western Japan, whose surviving form was built by the warlord Ikeda Terumasa between 1601 and 1609, in the years after the Battle of Sekigahara. Known as Shirasagi-jo, the White Heron Castle, for its white plaster walls, it is the largest and best-preserved castle of Japan’s age of castle building. It is a National Treasure and was among the first Japanese sites placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1993.

Origins: a fort on Himeyama

The castle stands on Himeyama, a low hill on the plain of Harima Province, beside the main road that linked the capital region with western Japan. According to tradition, the first fort on the hill was built in 1346 by Akamatsu Sadanori, a member of the powerful Akamatsu family. In the following two centuries the site passed between several local lords and grew into a small castle.

In the late sixteenth century the Kuroda family held Himeji. In 1580 Kuroda Yoshitaka, also known as Kuroda Kanbei, gave the castle to Hashiba Hideyoshi, the general who later became famous as Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi used Himeji as his base for campaigns in western Japan and built a three-storey keep there, completed around 1581.

Rebuilding after Sekigahara

The decisive change came after the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600. The victor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, rewarded his ally and son-in-law Ikeda Terumasa with the province of Harima, a domain assessed at about 520,000 koku. A koku was a measure of rice, and domain sizes were expressed by their estimated annual harvest.

Terumasa began a complete rebuilding of the castle in 1601. Work went on for about eight years, and the great keep complex was finished in 1609. The project was meant to do more than house a lord. Himeji lay on the route that any hostile western lords, such as those still loyal to the Toyotomi family in Osaka, would take towards the Tokugawa heartland. A strong castle there, held by a family linked to the Tokugawa by marriage, guarded the western approaches.

The rebuilt castle was larger and grander than anything on the site before. Terumasa reused material from Hideyoshi’s keep, including stones, but the design was new. After the Ikeda family moved on, Honda Tadamasa became lord of Himeji in 1617 and added the Nishi-no-maru, or western bailey. It included a residence for his daughter-in-law Senhime, the granddaughter of Ieyasu and the widow of Toyotomi Hideyori, who had died in the Siege of Osaka.

Design and defences

Himeji Castle is famous for its beauty, but it was designed for war. Its central feature is a connected keep complex: a main keep linked by covered corridors to three smaller keeps, forming a strong inner courtyard. The main keep appears to have five storeys from outside but contains six floors and a basement. It rises about 31.5 metres above its stone base, and the whole structure stands roughly 46 metres above the ground.

The walls are covered in thick white plaster over a timber frame. The plaster gave protection against fire, the great danger to wooden buildings, and created the gleaming appearance that inspired the castle’s nickname. Its gables and curved roofs, layered one above another, add to the impression of a bird spreading its wings.

The approach to the keep is a maze. Paths wind through a series of gates and narrow courtyards, sometimes turning back on themselves, so that attackers would lose their sense of direction while defenders shot at them from above. The walls contain hundreds of loopholes for guns and arrows, in circular, triangular and rectangular shapes. Openings called ishi-otoshi allowed defenders to drop stones or fire downwards at enemies climbing the walls.

In the end these defences were never tested. Within a few years of the castle’s completion the Tokugawa had destroyed their last rivals, and Japan entered more than two centuries of internal peace under the Tokugawa shogunate. Himeji served as the seat of a succession of lords, administering the domain rather than defending it.

Survival through modern times

Many Japanese castles were lost after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the new government abolished the domains and saw castles as symbols of the old order. Himeji passed to the state and to the army. A popular story says that it was put up for auction in the early 1870s and sold for a tiny sum, but that the buyer found it too costly to demolish; the details of this tale are uncertain.

In the late 1870s army officers, among them Colonel Nakamura Shigeto, argued that Himeji and Nagoya castles should be preserved as national monuments, and the government agreed to fund repairs. The castle was designated a National Treasure under the system of the time and confirmed under the post-war law in 1951.

During the Second World War, American air raids in early July 1945 destroyed much of the city of Himeji. The castle survived largely undamaged. Local accounts say that an incendiary bomb struck the top floor of the keep but failed to ignite, although this story cannot be fully verified.

Two great restorations followed. In the Showa restoration, from 1956 to 1964, the main keep was dismantled and rebuilt piece by piece. In the Heisei restoration, from 2009 to 2015, the roofs and plaster of the main keep were renewed while visitors watched from a temporary scaffold building.

Legends and culture

Himeji Castle has many legends. The best known is the ghost story of Okiku, a servant girl said to have been thrown into a well after being falsely accused of losing a precious plate. Her ghost is said to rise each night to count the plates. A well in the castle grounds is still called Okiku’s Well, though the story exists in several versions set in different places.

The castle has appeared in many films and television dramas, including Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha and Ran and the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. Each spring its grounds attract large crowds for the cherry blossom season.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1346: According to tradition, Akamatsu Sadanori builds a fort on Himeyama.
• 1580: Kuroda Yoshitaka hands the castle to Hashiba (Toyotomi) Hideyoshi, who builds a three-storey keep.
• 1600, October: Tokugawa Ieyasu wins the Battle of Sekigahara and later grants Harima to Ikeda Terumasa.
• 1601: Ikeda Terumasa begins rebuilding the castle.
• 1609: The great keep complex is completed.
• 1617: Honda Tadamasa becomes lord and begins the western bailey.
• 1945, July: Air raids destroy much of Himeji city; the castle survives.
• 1956–1964: Showa restoration of the main keep.
• 1993, December: Himeji-jo is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
• 2009–2015: Heisei restoration; the keep reopens in March 2015.

Why it matters

Himeji Castle is the most complete surviving example of the castles built in Japan during the brief, intense period between the wars of unification and the long Tokugawa peace. Its walls, gates and keeps show how Japanese builders combined military engineering with refined design. Having escaped war, fire, demolition and bombing, it allows visitors to see a great early modern Japanese castle much as its builders left it.