Artworks

Himeji Castle (Main Keep)

Artwork · Anonymous · 1601–1609 · building · Himeji Castle

Popularly the White Heron Castle, the most beautiful surviving Japanese castle. Toyotomi Hideyoshi built a three-storied keep on the site in 1581; after Sekigahara it passed to Ikeda Terumasa (1564–1613), son-in-law of Tokugawa Ieyasu, charged with watching the Toyotomi at Osaka, and between 1601 and 1609 it was rebuilt in its present form. Maze-like enclosures surround the honmaru: three three-storied keeps linked by towers and the five-storied tenshu, whose sequence of curved and pointed gables gives a light, ascending rhythm. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 240–241, fig. 273. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.