Castle Craftsmanship: Wooden Framing
The main keep of Himeji Castle has seven floors—six above ground, plus a basement in the stone foundation―supported by two large columns that run up through the center of the building. Each column is 24.5 meters tall and close to a meter in diameter, and they extend from the basement to the bottom of the sixth floor. The pillars are surrounded by a lattice of supporting posts and beams. The frame rises in an even, cubic shape to the third floor; above that, the floors become progressively smaller in size.
In a large structure like the Himeji keep, some of the longest posts and beams must be created by joining together lengths of timber. The complex joinery techniques required to create these components—and to ensure they are strong enough to hold up a castle—were developed over centuries and remain in use in many of Japan’s traditional wooden buildings.
East and West Columns: Spot the Difference
Imagine the keep as four stacked blocks. The biggest block goes from the basement to the second floor and is essentially a single cube-shaped frame. Floors three through six consist of smaller blocks stacked on top of each other. To keep the structure stable, builders attached the beams on each level to the west column, one of the keep’s two central supports. In order to evenly support the weight of the castle frame, the west column was constructed from a pair of meter-thick tree trunks, one joined to the top of the other at the level of the third floor. The east column is the trunk of a single tree.
Joints at the top of the lower portion of the west column, photographed during the 1956–1964 renovation
The west column after reassembly
Joinery technique used for the west column
Joinery technique used to extend beams and floor joists
Look and Feel
Try your hand at traditional Japanese joinery.
Joinery techniques like the ones connecting these blocks were used in the west column and other parts of the castle.