Himeji Castle

Where it sits. Himeji Castle stands on Himeyama, a low hill in the middle of Himeji in Hyōgo Prefecture, roughly 50 kilometres west of Kobe on the Sanyō corridor between Osaka and Okayama. The keep is visible from the shinkansen platform and closes the view straight up Ōtemae-dōri from the station, a kilometre to the south. What survives is not a single tower but a complete fortress: 83 buildings, three moats in part, white plastered walls, gatehouses, corridors and storehouses spiralling around the central donjon. The main keep rises 46.4 metres above the surrounding ground, of which 14.85 metres is the stone base and the rest the timber structure — five storeys from outside, six floors plus a basement within.

The story behind it. A fort was raised here in 1333 by Akamatsu Norimura and rebuilt as a castle in 1346. Toyotomi Hideyoshi took the site in 1580 and put up a three-storey keep the following year. The castle in its present form is the work of Ikeda Terumasa, son-in-law of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was installed at Himeji after the battle of Sekigahara and rebuilt everything between 1601 and 1609. Honda Tadamasa added the western bailey in 1618 for his daughter-in-law Senhime, granddaughter of Ieyasu, whose long corridor of rooms still runs along the wall there. The castle never fell to siege, was spared demolition in the Meiji period, and survived the American firebombing that levelled most of Himeji on 3 July 1945 — an incendiary that landed on the top floor failed to ignite. UNESCO inscribed it in December 1993, in Japan's first group of World Heritage properties.

Why the architecture is worth reading closely. The approach is a deliberate trap. From the Hishi Gate the path doubles back on itself through the Ro, Ha, Ni and Ho gates, narrowing and turning so that an attacking force is repeatedly funnelled beneath walls with drop-chutes for stones and openings for arquebuses. Those loopholes are cut in three shapes — circles, triangles and rectangles — matching different weapons. The white finish that gives the castle its nickname, Shirasagi-jō or White Heron Castle, is lime plaster applied over the roof tile joints as well as the walls, which makes the whole silhouette read as a single pale mass and also slows fire. Inside the keep, the two great pillars of fir and cypress run nearly the full height. Between 2009 and 2015 the keep was sheathed in scaffolding for the Heisei restoration, re-tiled and re-plastered; it reopened on 27 March 2015 startlingly white, and has been weathering back down since.

On screen. Himeji plays the ninja training school of Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service, in You Only Live Twice (1967), the fifth Eon Bond film, directed by Lewis Gilbert with a screenplay by Roald Dahl. Sean Connery's Bond is brought here to be trained in what the film calls the ways of ninjutsu, and the courtyards, white walls and gate sequences of the real castle carry the scene, with trainees fighting in the baileys and scaling the stonework. The unit shot in Japan in the summer of 1966; the volcano rocket base that dominates the rest of the film was Ken Adam's set at Pinewood. Himeji has also served Akira Kurosawa twice, in Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), stood in for Osaka Castle in the 1980 television Shōgun, and appeared in The Last Samurai (2003).

What a visit involves. Entry is through the Hishi Gate and the route is one-way, climbing through the baileys to the keep. Inside, the stairs are original: steep, narrow, wooden, and taken in stockinged feet with your shoes in a plastic bag, which is the single biggest obstacle for anyone with limited mobility. Allow two hours for the standard circuit, three if the west bailey and the Hyakken corridor are included. Kōko-en, a set of nine walled gardens laid out in 1992 on the site of former samurai residences, adjoins the west side and gives the best low-angle view of the keep across water.

Getting there and timing. Himeji is on the Tōkaidō–Sanyō shinkansen, about 30 minutes from Shin-Osaka and an hour from Hiroshima, and the castle is a 15-minute walk or a short bus ride from the north exit. Early April draws large crowds for roughly a thousand cherry trees in the baileys; November gives cleaner light and thinner queues. Arrive at opening on any weekday to climb the keep without waiting, since entry to the donjon is capped by numbered tickets when the site is busy.