天守　(tenshu) is the Japanese word for a castle tower. There are only 12 original tenshu left in Japan. I visited them all over a couple of years and made some simple videos. You can find a map of the 12 and a little more information on this page.

(The plan was to save the best for last – Himeji being the grand dame of Japanese castles, after all. Thing is, it was the third castle I visited in this little project and I think that’s readily apparent in the quality of the video I had to work with. Lessons learned and all that…. )

Himeji’s the quintessential example of the oriental fortress. Perhaps best known for being a ninja training camp in You Only Live Twice, which was the only time the castle received damage – from a stray shuriken. (I can’t find any confirmation of this online, so maybe it’s just an apocryphal tale I’m perpetuating. Oh well.)

There’s been a castle here since 1333, but it would be 1581 before Toyotomi Hideyoshi did it up all fancy. Ikeda Teramasu would then expand the castle into something approaching its current size, complexity and general fabulousness, after receving it from his father-in-law, Tokugawa Ieyasu, post- Sekigahara, in 1600. Honda Tadamasa came along in 1617 and finished it up nicely.

Over the course of the 400 odd years it’s been here, it’s survived earthquakes – including the Great Hanshin Quake in 1995 – and the firebombing of the city in World War 2. (The castle was actually hit by a bomb which, fortunately, didn’t detonate.)

Most importantly of all though, it survived the Meiji era castle dismantling project – it was bought for 200,000 yen in 1871 by a private citizen, who was intending on demolishing it. In the end, he didn’t, and I think the castle became an army barracks at some point after that.

I’m not sure how much of an affinity the army retain with the place but they were all over the castle when I was there – cleaning out the moat, abseiling down the exterior and sweeping up the grounds. At the end of the day, it really is a military operation looking after this place: Himeji is huge. Apparently, the entire area it occupies is the size of 50 Tokyo Domes. That might not help you visualize it, so let’s get a bit more detailed – Tokyo Dome can hold around 50,000 people, meaning that the entire area which Himeji occupies would have room for 2.5 million people.

You know, if it were a stadium.

That’d be some event.