Ninja Hardware Used in Himeji Castle
The Himeji Castle is famous for its beauty because its wall is very white.
The castle has a nick name, “the castle of white heron”.
Because this castle still keeps a lot of its original buildings, architectural hardware are also remained as they are!
So, let’s take a look at the details of the castle and find out how the famous Japanese castle is decorated by the traditional hardware.
On the way to the castle
The Himeji Castle is one of the most famous castle in Japan. This castle is built in about 400 years ago.
This castle is famous not only for its beautiful exterior but also for its history. Most of castles, which had been built in 18th century or before, were almost completely destroyed by fires arising from the World War II or other disasters. The Himeji Castle maintains its original structure, although repairing works have been done once 30-50 years.
Entrance Gate “Ote-mon”
The entrance gate to enter the main land of Himeji castle.
The gate is large and stern-looking.
Inside the gate is called “Hon-maru”, meaning center of the castle.
Looks like height of the gate is almost 7 meters or 23 feet…
The large gate is decorated with steel hardware: Boobs Decor Tack as is a common hardware for gates. and Decor Plate at its hinges.
Because this castle is to fight against enemies, these hardware is more for practical use of defense rather than for decoration purpose.
Pillars of the gates are also protected by steel hardware.
We can understand how durable these hardware are. It’s been there for a long time!
Go through the main gate, we reach the large field where we can have great view of the main building of the castle.
Guests who entered from the main gates in old ages must have looked at this view and felt dignity of the general.
At the first gate to enter the area of main building of the castle.
It looked somewhat gorgeous; grilles are trimmed with gold-color decorative hardware which are probably made of brass.
Walls of the gate is colored in bright white same as the main building of the castle.
The front view of the first gate.
The gate size is somewhat smaller than the entrance gate, but is still large.
Side gate of the first gate.
When the gate doors are closed in the evening, this small gate is used to enter or exit.
Thickness of the small gate looks significant.
The gate is decorated with Boobs Decor Tack and Decor Hinge Plates. Also, a lock is installed at the center of the door.
To make the gate tough enough from the attack from the enemies, every corner of the pillars are protected by thick hardware.
We can easily imagine that these gates were hard to defeat by normal weapons e.g. swords, spears or arrows.
Although these hardware should be practical, they should be somewhat elegant.
Flower motif at the center of the large tack gives elegant taste to the gates.
There are more than several walls to reach the main building of the castle, which made enemies hard to reach there.
This is the second gate.
Structure is similar to the first gate.
Details of the decorative hardware is a bit different.
Because rivets are not put at equal intervals, skills of carpenters constructed these gates might not be obsessed about beauty.
Backside of the gate.
There is a bold to lock the gate from inside.
Compared to the front side of the gate, back side don’t have hardware.
After passing the second gate, there are an isle to reach the main building of the castle.
The way to the main building of the castle is not straight.
It’s a winding road so defending side could have chances to attack enemies as much as possible.
Isles are not wide and surrounded by the walls for the same reason.
At this point, the gate is fully covered by steel plates.
It’s no longer decorated…
As approaching the main building of the castle, gates are getting smaller and isle are getting narrow.
Common hardware for gates are installed here as well.
Interestingly, the gate have smaller door inside the gate.
This enabled only one person to go through the gate at a time, but s/he should have disarmed to go through it.
The final gate to reach to the main building of the castle is the smallest among all gates.
This could work as a bottleneck for attacking side to proceed, and work to slow down their speed.
Finally, we could reach to the main building of the Himeji Castle.
There was a gate after gate… and decoration of the gate got more simple as approaching to the main building.
Ninja Hardware in Historic Buildings
There are approximately 2,500 shrines and temples only in Kyoto city. Most of them has long histories although it varies from a few hundreds to 1400 years; the oldest temple in Kyoto, Koryuji-temple, built in 603 AD.
Some of them are built by authorities of the era to display their powers, therefore these buildings are gorgeously decorated. In the same way, authorities private houses, we call them Buke-yashiki (meaning Samurai’s houses), are also decorated with traditional decorative hardware manufactured by hand by artisans. When you walk around Kyoto city, these houses catch your eyes with their scale and traditional atmosphere.
Here we introduce how shrines and Samurai houses (bigger than merchant houses) are decorated with Ninja Hardware.
This is the main entrance gate for the main building.
There are four gates to enter the main building. This is the one.
The gates are twofold and covered with steel plates so enemies cannot defeat them easily.
Due to hundreds of years of history, the steel plates are rust off.
This is not by wars because the Himeji castle didn’t experience any wars.
At the top of the gate pillars, there’s some decoration.
It is painted with Japanese lacquer (called “Urushi”) trimmed with actual gold.
This decoration plates can generally be seen in the gates which lord of the castle and his guests had used.
The basement floor of the castle.
The floors of the castle are counted from the floor above its stone wall.
This floor is inside the stone wall, so there is no window. It’s a very dark floor…
Pillars are thick to support huge building of the castle.
In every intersection of pillars and beams, a decoration hardware is installed.
These are used for a practical reason to hide nails, and give it some gorgeous taste at the same time.
Another door on the basement floor.
It seemed to be made of steel and heavy…
Because this floor is very dark, you may not be able to see the details of the door without light.
I took this photo with very slow shutter speed.
This is the first floor of the castle.
Because there are windows, it’s bright enough to see details.
There is, however, not much things to see…
Actually, most of the castle in Japan are not for residence.
Even a lord of the castle had not lived in the main building.
It is used for the final fortress of the war. Therefore, inside of the castle is roomy.
Generally, preservative foods and weapons were there.
Here, same decoration hardware are installed in the beams.
You may be disappointed if you expect to see luxury living of the era.
It’s not the case because castles are totally for the war!
Zooming up to the decoration hardware.
It’s painted in black made of solid metal, probably steel. (Take a look at HERE for very similar product in our shop)
Corridor is wide enough to fight with enemies.
The protrusions on the wall are used to put arms such as spears, swords and guns.
When you go upstairs, ceilings become lower.
Same decoration hardware are used here.
Compared to wide corridors, stairs are narrow and steep.
This may be intended to make it difficult for enemies to attack upstairs.
Side view of the stairs.
The building is 99% made of wood, and few decoration was made inside…
In the top floor, there is a small shrine.
When a war starts (just assuming the case), lord of the castle came to this floor.
Samurai warriors are also came to the castle and tried to defend from enemies.
However, it generally meant “checkmate”.
Therefore, Samurais are tried to resist as much as possible to gain time for the lord so that he could suicide (“Harakiri”) by himself.
In the era, Samurais considered it a shame to be killed by enemies.
So, subordinates hoped their lord to “Harakiri” suicide rather than killed by enemies.
Let’s go back to decoration.
Roof of the castle is decorated with sea wolf-motif ornament.
It was common for the castle roofs to put sea wolf-motif ornaments.
Sometimes they were colored gold, but this one is in a natural color.
Decoration plates in the top floor are different from those in the other floors.
It’s made of brass.
Brass has gold color, so it gave some special mood for the top floor of the castle.
That’s all for inside of the castle main building!
Not much things to see for decoration hardware, but it’s interesting that we can still see some decoration hardware inside and outside of the castle.
The castle is repaired just recently and finished in 2015.
The cost of the repair was approximately 20 million US dollars;
15M from the government and the other 5M from donation of citizens, which shows how much the Himeji castle is loved by people.
For this big repair, the Himeji castle recovered its beauty of its origin.
Finally, most of the decorative hardware introduced in this page (not many used in Himeji Castle though…) are also sold in OrientalSouls.com shop. Please take a look at our shop if you’re interested.