姫路城大天守
The main keep of Himeji Castle is a timber tower completed in 1609 in present-day Hyōgo Prefecture. Five visible roof tiers enclose six floors above ground and a basement. Three smaller keeps and connecting galleries join it around a courtyard, forming one part of the larger castle.
Roof tiers and internal floors follow different counts.
Two great pillars work within a wider frame of posts and beams.
The surviving building records centuries of repair as well as its original construction.
The main keep stands at the southeast of the keep platform. Galleries connect it with the East, West and Inui smaller keeps around a courtyard. This arrangement is called a renritsu, or courtyard-connected, keep group; the castle also contains gates, walls and other buildings beyond it.
A roof tier is an external division, while a floor is an internal level. The fifth floor lies within the area of the fourth roof tier and is difficult to recognize from outside. A sixth floor sits above it, and the basement adds a further internal level.
Triangular chidori gables, larger chidori gables and curved kara gables break up the roofs. Some enclose small spaces and windows. The official guide links the fourth-floor rooms to the backs of chidori gables, giving a concrete way to connect the exterior with the interior.
The East and West great pillars rise about 24.6 metres from the basement to the fifth floor. The East pillar is one long timber; the West joins two lengths near the third floor. Horizontal members connect them at the floor ceilings, while the surrounding posts and beams form the rest of the structure.
In the section above, the west pillar is on the viewer’s left, with its splice inside 3F; the pillars end below 6F.
The city guide distinguishes four groups: basement to second floor, third floor, fourth floor, and fifth to sixth floors. The lower post-and-beam grid braces the feet of the great pillars. Higher posts can be offset from those below and carried on beams; continuous posts connect the fifth and sixth floors.
The stone platform surrounds much of the basement, although windows open on its north and west sides. Partitioned rooms share this level with toilets and a slatted drainage sink. Storage and service arrangements occupy the building’s base.
Passages run around the principal rooms on the first and second floors. Northern first-floor rooms served as weapons stores and storage rooms, with weapon racks also fitted to passage walls. Doors, stairs and storage fittings organize movement through these lower levels.
The third floor has two-level corner compartments called musha-kakushi, with firing openings facing in different directions. On the fourth floor, raised platforms were intended for responding with matchlock guns and other weapons. Higher windows were provided with smoke ventilation in mind.
On the sixth floor, the central room stands a step above the surrounding passage. Its ceiling, joinery and metal nail covers give it a formal shoin-style character distinct from the stores and defensive fittings below. Firing openings remain at this upper level too.
Hashiba Hideyoshi built a three-tier keep in 1581. Ikeda Terumasa began rebuilding Himeji Castle in 1601, and the present main keep was completed in 1609. These are successive building campaigns within a castle with a longer history.
Repairs strengthened the bases of the two great pillars in 1656. Additional supports and roof work followed in 1687, and diagonal bracing and props were installed in 1743 to address the tower’s lean. Maintaining the building already required repeated structural intervention during the Edo period.
In 1878, Colonel Nakamura petitioned to preserve Himeji and Nagoya castles. A local preservation association added a further campaign in 1908. Repairs begun in 1910 and completed the next year addressed the castle’s accumulated deterioration.
Full-scale dismantling repairs began in 1956. The project investigated the ground, installed concrete foundations and reassembled the keep with replacement timbers. Two lengths of hinoki were brought in for the new West great pillar in 1959. Work on the keep group and nearby buildings was completed in 1964.
The 2009–2015 campaign concentrated on work including relaying about 75,000 roof tiles, renewing white plaster and seismic reinforcement. Its scope differed from the earlier dismantling project. The tower visible today embodies both its historic construction and successive conservation decisions.
The exterior tiers and interior floors are different divisions; the fifth floor is concealed within a roof tier.
Galleries link the main keep and three smaller keeps around a courtyard.
They run from the basement to the fifth floor; other posts and beams connect the upper levels.
Weapons stores and racks, firing openings, corner compartments, raised firing platforms and windows intended to help vent smoke.
The Shōwa project dismantled and reassembled the timber structure and treated its foundations; the Heisei project focused on roofs, plaster and seismic reinforcement.
Collection objects and documentary photographs are identified by their particular object, period and use.