We were going to tour Himeji Castle, Japan’s largest, most visited castle, a distinctive, shiny white structure in the town of Himeji, a train ride from Osaka, where we had put ourselves for a couple of days during a longer self-guided tour of Japan. For Himeji Castle, we’d booked an English-language tour guide, who said he would meet us at the train station. We almost never book tour guides but this one was offered by the on-line service through which we got the tickets for the castle. So, why not?
His name was Masaaki, he was a Himeji native, he was retired and gave tours of the castle two days a week. He also took classes at a nearby university, focusing on economics and economic systems. We learned these things as we chatted about Himeji and ourselves on a city bus riding down the main street toward the castle perched on a hill.
As we rode, Masaaki noted where the outer moat surrounding the castle once flowed, now a paved roadway. Once, everything from where we were to the castle, still off in the distance, was part of the grounds. This far out is where the villagers—the peasants—and the ninja would have lived, not the shoguns or the nobles. They would have been inside the second moat, closer to the castle.
As we reached that inner moat, Masaaki pulled us aside. He stopped to talk about the phenomenal aspects of the castle—how it was built in only eight years, from 1601 to 1609, and several times he made points about the castle’s defensive systems. They were typical, he said. This was typical Japanese defensive style, he said. He mentioned narrow passageways and deceptive entrances. He promised to point out illustrations of these as we got nearer to and entered the castle.
He also talked about how at one time there had been more than 200 castles in Japan but some were destroyed in the wars between the factions within Japan itself and then many, more than 100, were destroyed or dismantled when the emperor was restored to the throne in the 19th century. When the emperor had been overthrown, he could not be killed because the emperor is thought to be a god, so rather than killing him, those who overthrew the emperor sent him to live in exile, Masaaki said. To kill the emperor would have caused the people to rise up againstthose who overthrew the emperor.
The thing was, destroying the 100 castles was to be an unmistakable signal of the end of the samurai period, the end of the Edo government. The emperor was restored to the throne after Japan had an internal dispute following negotiation of the 1858 treaty between Japan and the United States. The emperor wouldn’t go along with ratifying the treaty and instead calledfor keeping foreigners out of Japan’s affairs. A shogunate faction joined with the emperor to restore the monarchy. So the castles were taken down and, in some cases, the materials used to build barracks for the new government’s military.
And, of course, Masaaki said, some castles were destroyed by bombs during World War II. Indeed, the city of Himeji was fire bombed late in World War II and heavily damaged, but the castle remained intact, undamaged. From a cloth tote bag, Masaaki pulled out a binder, opened it, showed pictures in plastic sleeves of castles that had been destroyed by bombs. The black-and-white photos showed people standing around, looking in awe at flattened neighborhoods and burned out structural frames and foundations.
Almost ceremoniously, Masaaki folded the binder closed and put it back into the cloth bag.
Then he asked my age. I told him. His was the same, he said. He nodded rather self-satisfiedly. “The year,” he said, “it was 1951?” I confirmed it was. “Same for me,” he said. He nodded, smiled again, asked, “What month?” But he didn’t wait for my answer. He said, “For me, December. December 8. One day after the bombing.” He nodded solemnly.
Of course, it was one day and a number of years after the bombing. Pearl Harbor. But it was something, and he brought it up.
Immediately, I wanted to discuss this. I wanted to ask questions. The American school system had taught my generation that the attack on Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. A total surprise. Information that subsequently came my way told me Japan already was at war with China—Japan was the invader of the weaker China—and the U.S. government was using economic sanctions against Japan, undermining Japan’s war effort. Japan’s military leaders reasoned they had to attack the U.S., win a quick truce, and throw off the economic sanctions in order to prevail against China.
Could I ask Masaaki about this? Could I ask how he viewed his country’s invasion of another? How he viewed his country’s bombing the military forces of a country now a major trading partner? Hindsight and all that, I imagined we could have a good, deep conversation.
But American and Japanese cultures are quite different, I had learned, and in a world of such differing constructed knowledge, what did Japan tell its citizens about the war? How did they view it, this much later? I hesitated. Was this fodder for discussion in a country so formal as Japan? A country whose citizenry was so formal as Japan’s was?
Before I could decide, Masaaki turned away, and he led us uphill toward the main castle entry, then he stopped and asked which way we thought the shortest entry to the castle was. The pathway to the main gate clearly lay ahead of us, and so I judged that the answer he sought was something else. The less obvious.
Two paths lay to the sides, one in either direction, 90 degrees from the apparent entryway. One of those seemed to go nowhere. Or at least nowhere promising. A dead end. The other seemed to lead around to the side of a lower building that ran more or less toward the main keep or castle building. So I guessed that this was the quickest way into the castle. Masaaki smiled.“At the end,” he said, “you will know.”
We went on, following the crowd uphill. Masaaki stopped several times, showed us how the walls that lined the approach had been built on the slant, had been set up with holes through which various weapons could be used, that the holes were sized and shaped for specific weapons. And he noted the way the pathway narrowed down, turned sharply, climbedawkwardly. He indicated these things several times as we went. “Typical Japanese defensive strategy,” he said.
I imagined World War II soldiers building their equivalent fortresses on Pacific islands.
I wanted to discuss this with Masaaki. But I knew Masaaki saw himself as more than our guide, also, in a sense, as our host. That was why he met us at the train station, not at the castle itself. A host escorts his guests in a proper manner. A Japanese host bows and shows you are his guest, he welcomes you, he appreciates your visit. Masaaki had done all of that and more. And he had shown deference, every polite consideration, in his emails as he wrote to plan our meeting.
Then, we were moving again, toward the castle, joining throngs of people, some in groups led by guides with umbrellas or cameras on extender handles, held aloft to show where the guide was. There seemed great anonymity in those groups filing around. Some people were not guided at all.
Himeji Castle was registered in 1993 as one of the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Japan. The area inside the middle moat is designated by Japan as a special historic site and also a national treasure. Where the castle stands today, something of a castle or fortress of some kind has stood for centuries. Those there previously were attacked off and on by various factions as Japan went back and forth between ruling powers and rulers during governmental switches, samurai to emperor and nobles, and back, over hundreds of years.
In its current form, the castle is starkly white and shining on the outside, but inside it stands in a seemingly unfinished state—that is, unfinished wood. The floors, walls, ceilings, all are made of wood rough-hewn with axes and hand tools, without sanding or final finishing. There is no sign of paint or plaster anywhere on the inside. Each major piece, the beams and floor joists, measured and cut on the ground, was marked with a system of keys or symbols telling the carpenters and fitters working inside how to assemble the structure once those pieces had been lifted up into place. Masaaki pointed out places where the symbols still are visible. It was done this way, he said, because when they started work on the castle, things were in turmoil and no one knew how quickly they would need the castle, when there would be a war that required the rulers to move into it. They wanted to finish it as quickly as possible. Function took precedence over finish.
Because it is Japan, visitors must remove their shoes before ascending to the castle’s interior floors. We were instructed by signs in Japanese and English to put shoes into plastic bags and carry them with us. The stairs so hurriedly built clearly were not thought through for people in sock feet awkwardly carrying shoes in plastic bags. Over the various sets of steps leading through to the sixth floor, the stairs had a rise of 10 to 12 inches and treads of 6 to 8 inches. The ceilings were 10 to 12 feet. There were many steps to cross to get up to the sixth floor and look out the windows to see the castle grounds so far below. Several times, the official guides for the castle stopped groups and held them in place while a herd of tourists ahead cleared a room or staircase so that, as the officials explained in Japanese and English, no one would be injured going up or down the stairs. Low-hanging beams made hitting your head more than a great likelihood, a several-times reality for a taller American visitor.
The view from the top, the sixth floor, is rather stunning, and, as Masaaki pointed out, that level includes built-in secret hiding places where, during an invasion, soldiers could tuck in,hide themselves, then launch out and attack the invaders. “Another example,” Masaaki said, “of the Japanese defensive thinking.”
At the end of our tour, we exited the castle through the quickest route, which was indeed short and straightforward, and not as easily defended as the pathway set up by the castle’s planners. Masaaki said the nobles and rulers who occupied the castle in time of war would have come in through this quick route but the enemy would have been led by all clues, visible and otherwise, to the main gate, where the defenses would have come into play.
Which led to my asking Masaaki how the defense system had worked for the castle. He shook his head slowly, smiled somewhat, and said, “It has never been tested. The castle has never been assaulted.” They built it quickly and finished it, stored supplies and weapons within it, made it ready for war, and what came was an extended period of peace.
As we stood together back outside, Masaaki asked if I had suggestions for how he could improve his English. I told him his English was good. Very workable. He said he thought he could use work. He seemed very much to want a suggestion, I wanted to make a suggestion. So I said practice by listening to English pronunciation, articulation. Even on YouTube. Or anywhere he could get recorded appropriate English pronunciations. That was all I had that I thought he would have ready access to. Masaaki nodded, thanked me. He bowed.
From his binder, Masaaki pulled out and handed over a three-page, stapled document, something that clearly had been typed up and printed out. He explained that it was a story of Japanese history that he had written. His name was on the right side of the first page, in Japanese. He pointed this out. I thanked him and tucked it away. Later, I pulled it out and read it.
What Masaaki wrote traced the various revolutions and factions who held power and lost it or yielded it over the hundreds of years Japan had existed as a country, and he wrote how not being able to execute an overthrown ruler kept the people of a country from fully feeling the effects of a revolution. In Japan, he wrote, this was especially important. He came to when the samurai era ended, when the emperor was restored to the throne shortly after the middle of the 19th century, but it was not like the French Revolution, in which the king was executed, he wrote.
This was of major importance not only to Japan but to world history, it seemed.
Without the killing of the overthrown ruler as an obvious sign to note the passage of one government to another, Masaaki wrote, in order to ensure acceptance of the new governmentwhen the emperor was restored to the throne, it became necessary to signify the end of the Edo Shogunate with a couple of key steps. First was abolishing feudal domains and making Buddhist shrine priests government officials to symbolize their removal from the power of the shogunates. Then, demolishing the shogun castles, which is when more than 100 were destroyed or their materials repurposed, and then revoking samurai privileges.
The second step, and the more significant, it seemed, as I read Masaaki’s writing, was deifying the emperor.
Masaaki wrote several key dates in the process: “In 1868, the Five Articles of Oath, in which the Emperor reported to God his policy for governing the country; in 1889, the Constitution of the Empire of Japan was enacted, promulgating the administration of the country with the Emperor as its center; in 1890, the Emperor declared that his ancestors were the god who had created this country, and issued ‘the Imperial Rescripts on Education.’ Although it is a short text of 315 characters in all, it contains the fundamental of education based on the family-state view of the Emperor as the father of the nation, patriotism and Confucian morality.
“This Imperial Rescript on Education was widely spread among the people through school education and became the pillar that supported the Emperor System. It was recited and the national anthem was sung at every national school event. Unfortunately, this education that regarded the Emperor as a god was used by the military in the Showa period and led to the miserable war.”
Ah. “The miserable war.”
So there was my answer.
December 05, 2025