The castle where eternity dwells

Today, Himeji Castle. Said to be Japan's finest. I set out way too early in the morning to beat the crowds, only partially succeeded, and spent the whole day being totally exhausted. However, as castles go, it was pretty decent - I just wish I'd gone earlier instead of leaving it until what turns out to be Silver Week - a consecutive five days of rest during which the Japanese swarm over places of sightseeing interest.

This mysterious monument greets visitors leaving the station. There was an explanatory plaque, but anyone without exceptional vision would have had to stand in the middle of a busy road to read it. More on the Himeji nudity fetish later.

One positive feature of Himeji is that getting from the station to its star attraction is easy - they are connected by a huge and unmissable main street. On the other hand, said street is also criss-crossed by many roads, and traffic means it takes a while to traverse.

The Japanese excel at service, to the point where it can sound slightly creepy.

The main street is lined with a variety of statues and pieces of modern art. Here we see the return of Osaka's mystery fish.

Himeji Castle south moat. It is an extremely well-fortified castle, and guidance inside generally glosses over the fact that none of these features have ever been used in battle.

The castle itself, sometimes nicknamed "Shirasagi" or "White Heron" Castle for its beautiful white appearance.

Apart from general awesomeness, a key advantage to Himeji Castle is that it is one of Japan's few original historical buildings - it miraculously avoided both natural disaster and WWII bombing, and apart from basic preservation work is still in its original form. Really, much of what you see there speaks for itself, in terms of an overall feel as much as specific sightseeing spots. Conversely, try though those who run it might, its history just isn't that interesting - it was never besieged, and when it was conquered at the end of the Tokugawa era, it wasn't by conventional warfare. Ultimately, its timeline is little more than a long list of the people who lived there, and the ways they fortified it if they did.

The gate through which I entered. Note combination of practicality and aesthetics - this characterises Himeji Castle.

At the entrance to the West Bailey, a sign shows an edge of exasperation with ignorant tourists.

The West Bailey, with its wonderfully named "Cosmetic Tower" (a more thoughtful translation inside amends this to "Tower of Vanity", but too late) held the women's quarters, being built using the dowry of Princess Sen when she married into the family then ruling the castle. As one of the two key indoor sites, there was over half an hour of queueing just to get in - in the early morning. This, however, did not prepare me for what was to come later.

Inside, most of the bailey was occupied by the Long Corridor, which had windows and defenses on one side and women's quarters (mainly for ladies-in-waiting) on the other. It was quite repetitive, though the authenticity helped. A few rooms contained informative signs - there were queues to get in and out of these.

Himeji Castle roof tiles, each stamped with the family crest of the clan that had donated them.

Clearly, the author of this explanatory notice was unfamiliar with the concept of a harem.

The door itself. Whether it was really meant to keep people out or in is anyone's guess now.

One of the rooms. They were all identical, and disappointingly bare - while this is more authentic in a way, I can't help feeling that just a little replica furniture would have done wonders for the atmosphere.

A hole for dropping rocks, arrows or bullets on the heads of opportunistic invaders. There were many of these, and they blended wonderfully with the overall decor - which is deliberate.

A shot of the inner castle grounds as seen from the Cosmetic Tower. It seems remarkably peaceful, and nice for walks.

A replica, based on extant paintings, of Lady Sen playing a game with a lady-in-waiting and bonus cat. Apparently, she was a smoker, and the records seem to indicate that she enjoyed her life in the tower.

Having finished my tour of that particular building, I gradually moved on to the main keep. When I say gradually, let me put it another way. When I come back to Himeji with my girlfriend, I will leave her at the entrance to explore, and start building an equally grand castle of my own, starting with the fundraising process. There is a good chance I will be done before she is. That is how long the queue for the main keep was around noon (never mind the lesser queueing inside). We are literally talking hours, and a number of visitors that any warlord would give his right hand to have as an army.

I passed the time by reading my Naruto manga with a dictionary, as well as chatting to two very kind Japanese women, Ayumi and Ritsuko, who had brought their children to see the castle. They even kept my place in the queue while I went to sit down on a bench next to said kids (which may or may not have saved me from falling where I stood; cumulative exhaustion plus hours of standing still = bad). I am rather embarrassed that, even though I spent approximately half of eternity in the line, I still didn't get even halfway through the manga.

The well above conceals a sad tale. A maid named Kiku, lover of one the castle's retainers, learned of a plot by the chief retainer to assassinate the castle's lord. She informed her lover, and the plot was foiled, but in revenge the chief retainer stole one of the castle's ten precious ornate dishes, and accused her of the crime. Being the person in charge, he then had her executed by throwing her body into the well. Ever since, castle residents reported hearing a woman's voice coming from the well in the dead of night, counting "one dish, two dishes, three dishes..." until at last her spirit was placated by enshrining her as a goddess in her own shrine.

 

Himeji Castle, towering view. Unseen below is a queue the very mass of which distorts time and space. Perhaps this is the key to the castle's remarkable preservation?

 

Inside the castle at last, one is reminded early on that warfare in Japan evolved over the course of the centuries. Guns and Christianity were the West's key early exports into Japan; of these, Christianity did not flourish.

 

 The castle is filled with tiny doorways leading into hidden rooms whence samurai could emerge to surprise invaders. In peacetime they doubled as storerooms which made use of every inch of the castle's space. You can judge for yourself how ingeniously they were concealed.

 I privately suspect that the reason for castles as a physical expression of political power over many hundreds of years had less to do with strategic value and more with the ability of warlords to enjoy views like this on a daily basis.

 This shrine was originally removed from the grounds to make room for the castle, but a variety of storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters soon persuaded the builders to replace it - now on the top floor of the keep. Needless to say, once the spirits were appeased, the disasters ceased.

 While the original design for a castle made out of matchsticks appealed greatly to the Imperial Treasury, fire safety regulations caused it to be relegated to Plan B.

 

Plan A, on the other hand, gives some sense of how far the castle's reach stretched beyond the grounds of the main keep.

 According to legend, the original builder of the castle was struggling due to lack of stone for materials, until a poor local woman donated her only millstone for the project, inspiring a wave of similar donations from the townspeople. The millstone is now part of this particular wall, but sadly it was not indicated as to which stone.

 This wall is notable for being made from oil and sand, rather than more conventional stone. It has stood for over 300 years, and is apparently tough as...well...stone.

 Every now and again, the linguistic limitations of the Japanese generate signs that are practically spiritual in their impact. A better example will come at Mount Hiei.

 

 An interior view of Himeji Castle. It loses none of its beauty close up.

 These 4th Century stone coffins were discovered as part of the materials making up the interior walls. I bet there are archaeologists who daydream about that sort of thing when they need cheering up.

 

The brave defenders of Himeji Castle's moat.

 Having been permitted to leave by the terrible overseers of Himeji Castle's outer defenses (see above), I decided to visit one more place - Koko-en Garden - before going home. In the event, I almost didn't make it, due to a combination of extreme tiredness and arrows which pointed in directions completely unrelated to the garden itself (as well as no clarification, whether in onsite maps or in LP, that it was in fact off the castle grounds). I'm glad I persevered, though.

   

This large, flat rock has been converted into a gentle fountain so elegantly that it doesn't initially occur to the viewer that rocks are unlikely to produce water naturally.

Nevertheless, I decided to compromise with my tiredness by having lunch at Koko-en's built-in restaurant, which serves a variety of overpriced meals in front of an excellent view of one of the ponds, complete with many koi. Sadly, glass screens rather interrupted the directness of the experience. After a wait, I did my best to avoid the local speciality - grilled conger eel - but fate declared otherwise as anything I actually wanted to eat had just run out. Clearly, I was doomed to new experiences.

 On the art of presentation: my order in its initial form.

 

 For the curious: grilled conger eel, miso soup and all-but-compulsory palate-cleansing pickles.

The eel actually tasted better than a lot of the fish I'd eaten before (though I feel it is one of those foods best not combined with chopsticks), but there was a certain disadvantage which might only be appreciated by other vegetarians. Namely, attempting to enjoy the eel while watching a number of koi swimming happily in the pond outside, and being intensely aware that I was eating something that might well have been, a few hours ago, swimming just as happily in its own home, and was now dead on a plate in front of me, with a presumably violent transition between the two states.

Moving on to the rest of Koko-en, it comprised a series of gardens, each once belonging to one of the castle's samurai retainers. They were varied thematically, such as evergreen gardens, gardens of plants grown during the Tokugawa period and so forth.

A small waterfall. To me, one of the best things about traditional Japanese gardens is their use of water.

Unseen beneath the surface are countless koi.

 A small display of bonsai trees. Playing God has never been so much fun.

[realtime note] I'm typing up the rest of this while at home and besieged by a cold, so apologies for the occasionally negative tone. That said, it helps me emulate some of the tiredness I was feeling that day, so every cloud has a silver lining.

Small bridges such as this are an eternal challenge for the ambitious photographer, as they tend to swarm with tourists.

 

While I have little interest in flowers, the occasional specimen can be worth a closer look.

One of the less expected attractions of Koko-en included their display of miniature gardens made out of clay tiles. This is as unusual an art form in Japan as I imagine it is elsewhere, and there was some writing about its philosophical implications (being made from the earth, retaining the heat of the sun etc.) which, to be honest, I couldn't take very seriously. The more successful of the pieces struck me as things of beauty which could speak for themselves, and bonus layers of theory only got in the way.

 

Since murder is still illegal in Japan, I could do nothing about the man lying on the bench to the left. I note, by the way, that sleeping stretched out in public places like this is one of the things only Westerners in Japan ever did. The only Japanese I saw doing it were a couple of drunk, unkempt-looking old men (in trains).

 "Garden of Moonlight and Tile"

"Garden of Abiding Love". The symbol is "love" in kanji form.

 

Garden of Abiding Love, full-scale view.

The building on the left is a teahouse. Every tree and rock in this garden has allegedly been placed in accordance with strict ritualistic requirements.

 

Note the slightly different colours of the walls  - these tell you which samurai lived within.  A servant could pay with their life for mistaking the wrathful Slightly Sandy Brown Samurai for the laid-back Light Brown Samurai.

 

The incipient autumn foliage makes for some nice varietis of colour.

 

In certain parts of the ponds, one comes to feel that "swarm" is a more appropriate collective noun for koi than "school".

A tree. Judge for yourselves.

The current of this shallow river creates a wonderful shimmering effect as it speeds along its way while fundamentally staying still.

All Japanese people practically rave about the beauty of the country in late autumn, at least to tourists. Perhaps this is a sneak preview.

 

Fortunately for adventurers, Japan contains very few gazebos. Koko-en is something of an exception.

 Koko-en's miniature giant bamboo forest.

 

These signs warn that most of Himeji City is a non-smoking area. I love them for the alarmed samurai.

 

This is the kind of English advertising copy one comes to expect after a week or two in Japan. The shop sells long-sleeved kimonos.

 

And finally, Himeji's nudist fetish. Statues of naked men and women,.with no explanation, were everywhere. This one had a surreal inscription along the lines of "let's walk around while wearing a hat". No mention of the nudity.

Bonus shot A: today, Taruto and his cage were left outside Haruka's room while she battled with recalcitrant wallpaper. Thus, finally an opportunity to photograph him with no chance of escape.

Bonus shot B: Taruto in all his Bengal glory. His behaviour is certainly predatory enough to earn the approval of his tiger namesakes.