Himeji Castle, Japanese castle in Himeji, Japan
The castle complex rises from a 46-meter (151-foot) hill and encompasses 83 buildings with a multilayered defense system of interlocking paths, drop gates, and loopholes. The main keep reaches six floors above ground plus one basement level and is surrounded by three smaller towers. Massive stone walls with an upward-sloping construction form the base for the white-plastered wooden structures above.
Akamatsu Norimura fortified Himeyama hill in 1333; his son Sadanori replaced the fort with Himeyama Castle in 1346. Toyotomi Hideyoshi added a three-storey keep in 1581, and Ikeda Terumasa rebuilt the complex with three moats between 1601 and 1609. Honda Tadamasa added buildings including the keshō yagura in 1617–1618. The castle survived the 1945 bombing and the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, and was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.
This fortification ranks among Japan's three great castles and has served for centuries as a symbol of samurai power and military engineering. The complex appears regularly in films about feudal Japan and attracts millions of visitors annually who come to study traditional defensive architecture. Its white facade has earned it the nickname Shirasagijo, or White Heron Castle, shaping the global perception of Japanese fortifications.
The site opens daily from 9:00 to 16:00, with extended hours until 17:00 between April 27 and August 31. Guided tours in various languages are available, and access requires climbing steep stairs with no elevator. Himeji Station lies a 20-minute walk away, with clear views of the castle from its north exit. Ticket offices close 30 minutes before the daily closing time.
Colonel Nakamura Shigeto of the army engineers argued for saving the keeps and turrets alongside those of Nagoya Castle, and a stone monument in his honour stands inside the Hishi Gate. Citizens later petitioned both houses of the Diet for repairs, funded with 90,000 yen of state money. The 1956 restoration cost 550 million yen and 250,000 man-days.
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