and development in castle designs. Motte-and-bailey castles were gradually replaced by towers of stone, partly due to the former’s vulnerability to fire but also thanks to the tremendous progress of Romanesque church architecture, which significantly stimulated the development of craftsmanship in the building trades. Over the long term, the stone towers helped to create, reinforce and maintain a hierarchy within the nobility. Heavy masonry fortification was a significant step in the evolution of the power that permitted kings and dukes to impose their will on their vassals (p.45). Similarly in Japan, most came to be widely constructed during a period known as the Sengoku Jidai (The Warring States Period), which lasted for a century and a half until Japan was unified under the Tokugawa in 1615. The castles of the early Sengoku Period were mostly hastily constructed stockades, however as time went by the stronger daimyo absorb their weaker enemies, and their fortified bases came to be seen as a vital element in this process.
One of the features common to both the Japanese and European castle sites was an overall style whereby the keep lay at the highest point of the area enclosed by the castle and was surrounded by a series of interlocking baileys, however there are many visible differences with respect to architecture techniques, particularly in constructing the bases and the walls. For castles in the West, foundations and aprons at the base of walls and towers were made of huge stones from 60 cm up to 3 m high. Walls were made of stones usually between 20 and 60 cm high using the method of blocking-up: They were composed of two skins of masonry, one external wall, and one internal revetment, and the space between both was filled with rubble, earth, mortar, pieces of stones, gravel,...This technique did not produce as strong a wall as larger and properly fitted stones, but it allowed relatively cheap construction of massive and resilient walls. Another feature that would be absent from the Japanese design was the use of buttress to support the wall in places where pressure and thrusts were the greatest. In terms of aesthetics, bossage, clampings, bricks and stones of different colors formed more or less elaborate patterns decorating walls, towers and buildings. Protective religious items as well as coats of arms and other heraldic ornaments were placed above portals, gates and doors.
The walls of the Japanese castle had two parts, the smaller ones on top of the stone bases and the bases themselves.
No mortar was used, making them the world’s greatest dry stone walls. At first sight the walls look as if the stones were placed haphazardly, but in fact they followed a very careful geometric arrangement whereby the stones settled into a compact solidness through their own weights (p.24). The small walls of plaster and ground rock on top of the bases would be pierced with openings - triangular for guns, rectangle for arrows. These walls added greatly to the aesthetic of the castle.
To a large extent stone bases are the essence of “Japanese castles” of the Sengoku Period and it is also with stone bases that comparisons can be made with the European bastions. A European bastion was built entirely from scratch, either from stone or from earth, while a Japanese one tended to be carved from natural slopes and then clad in stones. Stone castle bases sloped dramatically outwards, as did European artillery bastions, but the geometrical reasoning behind them was very different. The horizontal geometry of a European bastion was primarily concerned with discovering the ideal angle for providing covering fire with no blind spots, and its vertical geometry was designed to keep to a minimum the amount of soil that would spill out after bombardment. The Japanese considerations were more ones of strength, both to hold back the inner core and to take the weight of a keep. There …show more content…
was also the constant threat of earthquakes, and it was found that long and gently sloping stone walls absorbed earthquake shocks very well.
In all fortification, the entrance was considered the most vulnerable part, thus received a lot of attention from castle builders and was heavily defended by the gatehouse. The portal of the gatehouse in an European castle was a Gothic arch and included a heavy wooden door, often reinforced with metal, and one or more wood or metal grilles, called portcullises, which could be dropped or slid into place to close the access instantaneously (Stockstad, p.27). Although lacking these portcullises, the gates hung to the gatehouses of the Japanese castles were also heavy timber on massive iron hinges and were reinforced with iron plates and spikes. At the corner of the walls may be seen other towers of two or three storeys. These corner towers were often fitted with ishi otoshi (stone droppers), which were Japanese equivalent of the European machicolations - an innovation widely constructed on top of walls, towers and dungeon from the end of the 13th century.
In both Japanese and European castles, the keep was considered to be one of the most important military strongholds as well as the symbol of power and authority.
The European keep or donjon was high, massive and vertical, and its foundations were strong and resistant in order to help to distribute the huge weight of the building. Walls were always very thick in order to resist the battering ram; they were often reinforced with powerful masonry buttresses (p.46). It was composed of a various number of stories with the summit fitted with a roof and wall-walk, allowing guards to watch over the surrounding countryside and providing a place for active defense. Quite similarly, the Japanese tenshu kaku was typically of many stories, maybe even as many as seven. Unlike anywhere else in the castle, the windows, roofs and gables of the keep were arranged in subtle and intricate patterns. The shape of the keep’s roof was almost without exception in the ornate style that had been used for centuries for the most palatial residence, tiled with thick blue-grey Japanese tiles, with ornaments in the shape of fish as charms against evil spirit and
fire.
Considering the absence of any formal contact between the two cultures prior to the construction, the similarities found in the castles in Japan and Europe are worth noticing and can be interpreted as similarities in craftsmanship, in architectural mindsets and also in the process of historical evolution. In addition to being the specimen of the past, these castles as well as other ancient architectural structures can also serve as study objects of the extent that differences and similarities in history and culture can influence architecture.