Castle of the Uneasy Sun: The Lamentations of Himeji
It rises in strained alabaster silence, this keep of many winged eaves, Himeji Castle — 白鷺城, the White Heron Castle — perched like a bird whose soul has forgotten to migrate. Nestled in Hyōgo Prefecture, southwestern Honshu, it is Japan’s most pristine feudal fortress, a plumage of white plaster and curved rooftops, each tile guarding remnants not only of warfare, but of a museum of every breath the nation took across centuries. Its construction began in 1333, when Akamatsu Norimura, a samurai serving the Kamakura shogunate, built a modest fort on Himeyama hill. Like many such high seats of martial power, it began not as a statement but as a tactic: visibility, defense, advantage.
However, its fated incarnation began under Hideyoshi Toyotomi. After gaining control of the site in 1580, he completely rebuilt it with a three-story keep. But it would be Ikeda Terumasa, gifted the castle as a reward for his support of Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, who would remake Himeji into the sprawling complex that remains today. Terumasa’s construction, completed in 1609, produced the castle’s now-iconic five-story main tenshu (keep), flanked by three smaller keeps linked by corridors and gates.
At its peak, Himeji Castle encompassed 82 buildings and over 300 warehouse-like rooms interconnected by a labyrinth of winding paths intended to bewilder invaders. The white exterior was not mere aesthetic flourish—it was a fire-retardant coating of white plaster called shikkui, made from slaked lime and supplemented with shell ash and seaweed glue. An architectural brilliance that, despite the earthquakes, wars, and fires that ravaged much of feudal Japan, allowed the castle to remain untouched by the direct hand of destruction.
The 17th century saw it serving as Tokugawa’s shogunal bastion over western Japan, a reassuring icon to daimyo and villagers alike. And when the Meiji Restoration swept away feudal domains, Himeji Castle was slated for demolition—a fate it escaped largely through obscurity and indifference, spared like the last guest at a dwindling banquet. Sold at one point to a local buyer for the equivalent of less than $2,000 USD, it was too burdensome to dismantle. During World War II, bombs fell on Himeji, and one incendiary landed directly on the complex—but it did not detonate. Locals whispered that the spirits of fallen samurai still stood watch.
It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, praised as “the finest surviving example of prototypical Japanese castle architecture.” Himeji was not only an emblem of aesthetic minimalism and tactical brilliance, but also a palimpsest of Japan’s shifting power structures, its feminine visage belying centuries of carnage and consolidation. Its donjon was never breached in battle. In peace, it is pierced daily by a thousand cellphone lenses.
And thus, as always, began the modern erosion.
**
It was Thursday, and two elderly tourists from Perth—one named Meg, the other ambiguously named “Treble”—approached Himeji Castle’s front entrance with water bottles, a GoPro, and a laminated map of “feeling spots.” Upon entering the main keep, Treble paused in reverent confusion before the tsukimi-yagura, the Moon Viewing Tower, and declared in a faux-ceremonial accent, “This… this is the Transceiver Node.” When a tour guide politely explained the feudal purpose of the tower, Treble nodded solemnly and began to rub the wall vigorously with a piece of smoked Gouda.
“You see,” he murmured to no one in particular, “cheese restores the calcium of old stone. It’s a Dutch technique. You wouldn’t know.”
Later, inside the main keep’s chokushimon (imperial envoy gate), Meg insisted on taking a “noseprint” of the timber ceiling beams. When questioned, she explained that ancient wood could be “smelled into sympathetic memory.” She sniffed deeply and claimed to remember her sister’s wedding in Tasmania, followed by an ecstatic vision of Togukawa Ieyasu playing ping-pong.
The absurdity bloomed like algae.
That afternoon they convened in the inner courtyards and began affixing googly eyes—hundreds of them—to the suitō-bori, the castle’s freshwater moat. The eyes bobbed solemnly in the current, seemingly looking back at the guards with a thousand fishy emotions. “It’s to help the castle understand it is being seen,” Treble said. “Too many years locked away in its own history. Visibility is healing.”
By sunset, Treble had assembled an informal ideology he called Feudal Sensualism and began protesting the sacredness of stone. “No stone should bear weight unwillingly,” he shouted, standing atop a small mound and flinging traditional furoshiki wrapping cloths into the wind. “These stones didn’t consent to imperial tyranny! Free the load-bearing classes!”
Meg was seen attempting to hug the keystone lintels near the west bailey, whispering poetry she said came from a camellia bush that spoke to her via breeze.
When night fell, the staff found Treble under the portcullis, arms outstretched, barefoot, smeared in ceremonial miso paste. He declared he and the portcullis were now spiritually wed. He’d constructed a rudimentary torii gate from yakult bottles and old umbrellas for the ketsubon ceremony. He said it was a Shinto-Bauhaus fusion.
The castle did not respond, except perhaps with a subtle seismic tremble of shame.
**
One guardian, desperate for intervention, whispered about the ancient shirt. A cursed relic, or perhaps blessed — no one quite agreed — now only available in obscure regions of the internet. Legend said it could keep the castle’s dignity intact, shield its archways from unsolicited affection, and whisper to the stones that their load-bearing burden was appreciated. It was last seen folded solemnly in the shade of a vending machine near the east gate, worn briefly by a monk who disappeared in a puff of Ueno-brand matcha.
Some say the castle itself longs to wear it.
