So I went to Himeji Castle a couple of months ago...
...and I took a bunch of pictures, so here they are. I don't know that much of the history of the castle,
which seems kinda embarrassing to say, because it's really, really old. Like, if something had been around
for hundreds of years, and you didn't know anything about it, like anything at all, I feel like you've been
given a bunch of opportunities to know something, anything, but you haven't taken them. So when I say I
don't know anything about it, there is a lot that one could know about it, and I don't know those things.
Here's what I know, based on the pictures that I took:
The castle was built a while ago, not recently, so there wasn't a city there at the time. Actually,
I don't know that, there might have been a city there, but it wasn't this city. It didn't look like
that. The city has changed over time to look like this, but the castle looks like it has for a long
time (I assume so, at least, since I wasn't there a the time).
We took a train from the train station near our apartment to the train station in Hiroshima, and then
from there, we got on the Shinkansen. There are pictures of that trip, but that's a different,
non-castle related post, here.
Once we got off the Shinkansen, the castle is directly down the road.
It's really, really easy to find, which was nice. I guess it might be harder to find if you left the
train station from a different exit, but we didn't, so it was really obvious where we were going.
That picutre above shows the road from the castle side.
As a castle, it has a lot of walls, gates and doors. This is one of those gates. Some of them like this
one are sized so that large things can get through. Others, not pictured, are smaller so that you have
to duck down to get through. They seem to be designed so that the people inside can stab anyone trying
to get inside without being stabbed themselves. From what I understand about castles, this asymmetric
stabbing ability is very desirable. I don't think this is an exclusively Japanese thing, I think that
I've heard about this before in other cultures, but it's certainly a thing here at Himeji Castle.
Part of being old is that it's really tough. A lot of this has been restoration over the years, and there
has been some rather significant conflict over the years, which can be difficult for a military installation
like a castle. You might not know this, but during one of the most recent large scale conflicts that Japan
was invloved in, there was no significant fighting around this castle. That seems odd to me, that you take
all of the time to build this giant complex and then when the entire world goes to war for the second time,
you don't involve the castle in your strategy at all. I'm sure there is a reason, but I don't know it.
Anyway, this castle is tough, and it has large, thick, sturdy doors that used to keep people out. Now
though, I think it's mostly a tourist attraction, and some historical education also, and it's more about
letting people in, so these doors are pushed to the side so that they are no longer in the way.
Well, parts of the castle are big. Not all of it is large, as mentioned before, but parts of it are. That
gate, for instance, is really big. I don't really know why. Maybe it's big because it was supposed to be
be a part of the wall which is also big. Maybe it's big because bigger things that people needed to get
inside, like horses, or carts, or something were also big and so they couldn't get in the way. Maybe
there was a big gate contest when they were building the castle, and they decided to enter it? Who's to
say. Anyway, that's a picture of a big gate.
While the actual castle is really big, it could have been really, really small. It turns out that there is a
really small version of the castle inside the castle. And not just the castle, there is also a small version
of all of the houses and roads and what not from long ago. All of that, fit inside the castle. What's odd
about this is that as the city outside the big version of the castle got newer and things changed, the city
around the small version of the castle didn't change. The large version of the castle didn't change either,
just the city around it. It's very strange. Maybe things inside/near to the castle don't age? I don't know.
There is so much that I don't know about this. Also fun to think about, if there is a small version of the
castle and the surrounding area inside the large castle, what's inside the small castle?
The central keep of the castle is five floors, build on top of a wall that is also big, surrounded by walls that
are also big, and that was surrounded by a city that was there to support the castle, and that was
surrounded by more walls, and so on, and so forth. There are also ditches. Maybe they wanted to build it
like a test, so that only people who were good at climbing could get it? I don't know. So much about it is
unknown to me.
So if you were able to get past the walls, and the ditches, and through or over the gates, with the sturdy
doors, and up the hill, and then into the keep, and then up all five floors, at the top there is a shrine.
I don't understand any of this, because if you look, that thing in the front is an offering box. So they
try really, really hard to keep you away from this shrine, and then once you get all the way to it, they
ask you for money? Maybe this is another defense? Like, one guy says, Ok, what's our last line of defense?
Another wall? And the other guy says, No, if they already got past all of our other walls, another wall
might not stop them. Let's tell them they have to pay to use the shrine, so if they forgot their wallet,
they will have to go back and get it. Maybe they were hiding the shrine here. So much that I don't know
about this castle. Anyway, there is a shrine there, and you can pay it money.
There is a section of the wall around the castle that looks like walls from the outside, but it's really
a bunch of rooms connected by a hallway that is disguised as a wall. That seems really clever for some
things, but not well thought out for other things. Like, if you wanted to hide your money in your house,
the theives wouldn't know where your house was, because your house looks like a wall. But then if you
were walking home drunk one night, and you got lost, you would have to try every single section of wall
to figure out which one was yours so that you could go to sleep. Or if you wanted to invite your friend
over, part of it would be easy, cause you say, Oh, yeah, I live in the house that looks like a wall, but
then your friend wouldn't know which section of wall to got to. Same thing if you tried to order delivery.
Well, that's it, that's all I know about Himeji Castle from the pictures that I took. I hope this was
minorly educational for you, but if you would like to know more, I recommend Wikipedia, which I promise
I did not look at when writing this blog except this part at the end to get this link. Also, I could
make this link into a fancy text hyperlink if I wanted to, but I don't like hiding paths, so I'm not
going to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himeji_Castle
At the time of this post, SarisonZero lives and works in Japan. He recently wrote, debugged, and successfully executed his first lines of Javascript, and considers this a huge step forward.