Painting of Himeji Castle Town
| Area | Castle |
|---|---|
| Collection name | |
| Age | The Edo period (1603-1868) |
| Century | The 19th century |
| Painter | |
| Pronunciation of the painter’s name | |
| Date (year, month, day) | The third year of Bunka |
| Year (Christian Era) | 1806 |
| Volume | One hanging scroll |
| Material | Colored in ink on a sheet of paper |
| Size | 112.2×95.6 |
| Designation |
Explanation
The Harima Provincial government was established in ancient Himeji, which had already had a history as the center of a province. When Hashiba Hideyoshi conquered Harima in 1580, he chose Himeji Castle as his main residence according to a recommendation from Kuroda Yoshitaka. Subsequently, the castle was repaired by the Ikeda and Honda clans in the early Edo period (1603-1868) and was put into the current condition. Ikeda Terumasa, who became the lord of the fief of Harima, which yielded 520,000 koku of rice, as a result of the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, constructed a solid and elegant compound castle tower that is compared to a white heron in an effort to boost the beauty of the castle and the dignified appearance of the main building of the castle. He also actively committed himself to the design and construction of the castle town to create an early modern castle town that was a suitable symbol of his power.
Terumasa first boldly hammered out the basic design of the new castle space to be created by Himeji Castle and the castle town by distancing the main stream of Ichi River, far to the east from the town and installing a triple moat in a spiral form around the castle. He established the hill castle section (Hon-maru, Nino-maru and Nishi-no-maru) with castle towers, turrets, fences and gates standing close together on the northern side within the inner moat (inner enclosure) and the lord’s residence (corresponding to the usual residence, mansion and San-no-maru) on the southern side and made them a pivotal section of Himeji Castle. Terumasa bolstered the security on all sides by widely establishing public facilities for clans and samurai residences, excluding some shrines in charge of community festivals, within the middle moat (middle enclosure), in the castle town, arranged tradesmen’s houses and lower-ranking samurai’s residences within the outer moat (outer enclosure), and arranged temples at important spots within the castle town.
This painting accurately depicts the whole of Himeji Castle under the reign of the Sakai clan and the castle town (including towns along the streets stretching outside the outer moat) on a scale of 1 to approximately 3,000 using types of land in 13 colors. Information about the inside of the castle, such as the height of the castle tower, the number of turrets, the number of gates, the number of loopholes and the number of wells, which was revised in August in the third year of Bunka (1806), is written in the blank space of the painting, which is interesting as it provides official data about Himeji Castle at that time.
<The meaning of main colors> Pink: samurai’s residence; green: town; yellow: street; purple: temple; blue: water; red: shrine; brown: lower-ranking samurai’s residence; and dark brown: chief counselor’s residence
(The Second Collection of Works in the Possession of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History, 2002, a piece of writing by Hiroyuki Hotta was partially modified)