Another Japanese Castle - exterior

The summer monsoon was in full force today in Nagoya, Japan's third largest city with a population of about 2.3 million in the incorporated area. The rain simply teemed down out of the sky without a break. And so a small group of us including a couple of Australians and three Israelis decided to head for Nagoya castle, which at least would put us inside away from the rain. Well, that was the theory, but in practice it took us ages and after many wrong turns trudging the streets of Nagoya looking for the castle, we eventually found the quite impressive structure. Here are several shots of the outside of the building and models of the castle and surrounding palaces we found inside the edifice.

I should warn you that what you see dates from quite recently rather than the 1600s when a lot of the original construction work was done during the shogunate. That is because US bombing raids over Nagoya during the second world war destroyed much of the original compound and reconstruction is still under way in some parts. Here are some external shots of the buildings as one sees them today:

And here's a photo of much of the site ablaze in 1945.

The view from the viewing platform on the top floor of the castle is impressive, even on a day with pouring rain. Our hotel is adjacent to the tall structures on the sky-line, which gives you some impression of the distance we walked looking for the castle.

Here's a model of the castle compound showing how extensive it was. You can see the tall castle structure in a good defensive position in the foreground.

 

And here is the compound shown on an ancient presumably silk screen: 

This drawing inside the castle shows the main tower and a second, satellite tower called the main donjon and the minor donjon. This sparked some lively debate among us on whether the Japanese had imported the term donjon meaning 'dungeon'. However, the diagrams show a stately fortress, not a basement for banging up prisoners, so perhaps the two terms arose independently with different meaning.

Another screen inside shows the castle in the top left hand corner attached to the Hommaru Palace whose date and use is captured in the next picture.

And finally, we have a reconstruction of what some of the surrounding palace buildings might have looked like:

AS