Japanese Castle Design

Hey guys, another video for our castles and old buildings in Japan playlist. Obviously this is only a model but we wanted to show you because it gives you a bit of an idea about original Japanese castle construction and it also shows us some elements that you can't really see anymore and the reason is that the central part of these castles is often well maintained and original. However, where the external parts or the more distant parts of the walls and so on, usually the towns have grown and developed and new buildings have come up and a lot of the original structure is hidden. So as you can see, this is what we usually see with these castles is those inner walls and then you see row upon row of outside walls, external walls that continue and continue and continue and particularly in places like Himeji-jo which is the most famous castle of course. Japanese castle is the big Himeji, Himeji castle. You'll find those outer walls all the way through the town if you look for them. So quite often they're sort of hidden in amongst other buildings and things you don't sort of notice them but if you keep an eye out for them you see them and it gives you an idea of how far the defense has actually originally extended. Quite often they extended well away from the castle and then over the years they've just been hidden by new buildings. So this really gives you a bit of an idea because obviously they wanted to try and protect as much of the surrounding town as possible so there was row upon row and row of defensive walls and gates and checkpoints and all sorts of things going back through the town itself. Pretty good model isn't it with the festival going on there with the dashi. So it's sort of interesting so if you find yourself in Japan and you're walking around a town that adjoins a big castle like this keep an eye out for defensive walls because you will often see them in parks and beside rivers and all sorts of places between buildings and they'll often run concentrically away from the castle. It gives you a bit of an idea if that's what they originally were, a defensive wall. Anyway hopefully someone found that a little bit interesting. More videos coming soon!