Himeji Castle

Himeji Castle is the finest surviving example of a classic Japanese castle, and its buildings have stood intact since the early 17th century. Its brilliant white plastered walls and layered roofs, rising in tiers above the city like a bird taking wing, have earned it the name Shirasagi-jō, White Heron Castle. In 1993 it became one of Japan's first UNESCO World Heritage Sites, five of its buildings are National Treasures, and it is the largest and most visited castle in the country.

Himeyama hill was first fortified in 1333 by Akamatsu Norimura during the Genkō War, and the Kuroda clan turned the fort into Himeji Castle in the mid-16th century. In 1581 Toyotomi Hideyoshi added a three-storey keep. The castle we see was the work of Ikeda Terumasa, son-in-law of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who received it after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Between 1601 and 1609 he demolished Hideyoshi's keep and built a vast complex surrounded by three moats; Honda Tadamasa added further buildings in 1617–18, including a tower for his daughter-in-law, Princess Sen. After the Meiji Restoration the castle was abandoned and slated for demolition, but survived; it came through the firebombing of Himeji in 1945 – a bomb hit the top floor but did not explode – and the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake almost unscathed. A thorough restoration finished in 2015 and returned the roofs to their original whiteness.

The complex numbers 83 buildings, including 74 designated Important Cultural Properties: gates, turrets, walls and corridors arranged as a maze. The path from the Hishi Gate to the main keep is 325 metres long for a straight-line distance of 130 metres, doubling back on itself so that attackers would have been under fire all the way – even today, visitors sometimes get lost. The 46-metre main keep, joined to three smaller keeps, looks like five storeys from outside but has six floors and a basement, with racks for guns and spears, stone-throwing platforms, hidden rooms for defenders and around a thousand loopholes across the site. Look out for the widow's millstone set into a wall – legend says an old woman gave it to Hideyoshi when he ran short of stone – and the well linked with the ghost story of Okiku. The Kōko-en garden next door was laid out in 1992.

Getting there

The castle is in central Himeji, at the end of the main avenue leading from Himeji Station, a major stop on the Sanyō Shinkansen and the JR Kobe Line. Kobe Airport (UKB) is about 54 km away; Kansai International (KIX) and Osaka Itami (ITM), both about 67–68 km, have wider connections.