Himeji Castle

From 1577 until 1581, a tenshu only three stories high was constructed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1585, Hideyoshi's wife's (Kinoshita Iesada) brother took residence at the Himeji. The presentday Himeji Castle was built after the Battle of Sekigahara with the victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu over the defeat of Toyotomi's men. In 1601, Tokugawa Ieyasu then gave the castle to his son-in-law, Ikeda Terumasa. For the next eight years until 1609, Terumasa overlooked the rebuilding and renovating of the Himeji Castle.

Tadashige Igi was placed in charge by Terumasa of overseeing the construction of the Himeji Castle. Igi was an intelligent man and planned out everything by creating different groups for building the castle. Some of the groups included finance, materials, and plot plan. The plot plan was very important in determining the degree of protection of the castle. The main goal of the plot plan team was to take full advantage of the geographical features on which the castle was built near.

The Himeji Castle was built on Mount Hime with the plain-like grounds surrounding it. The plot plan team wanted the castle grounds to include the land around the Mount Hime in a spiral type shape. The inner most circle of the spiral included the honmaru, ninomaru, sannomaru, and nishinomaru. The warriors' residences were located in the next circle of the spirial and the lower class warrior residences along with temples were built on the third and outer circle of the spiral. To better fortify the castle grounds, moats were built around each circle of the spiral.

The interesting thing of the the Himeji Castle is its tenshu complex. The original tenshu was removed and its size was increased to a width of 25.6 meters and a length of 19.7 meters when Terumasa renovated the castle. The main tenshu was five-stories tall and had seven floors. It was connected to three smaller surrounding tenshus. All of the tenshus were connected by two story passageways and made a box-like shape. To enter this tenshu complex, one had to go through a gate into a court where all four tenshus were able to choose whether they wanted to attack or not. On top of the tenshus were turrets with even more passageways connecting them. In this maze, there was a kitchen built into this military post in case of a siege. The wooden walls of the tenshu were very thick and were filled with bamboo strips and clay for support. The overhanging edges of the roofs had plaster over them and were whitewashed so they weren't as vulnerable to fire and rain damage. It is the color of the whitewashing that has given the Himeji its alternate name of the White Heron Castle (Shirasagi).

The tenshus of the Himeji Castle are declared Japan's National Treasures and its turrets, gates, and moats are all name Important Cultural Property.