Hikone Castle - Climbing Stone Walls

From Jcastle.info

Hikone Castle - Climbing Stone Walls

The main objective of my 2019 revisit of Hikone Castle was to better see and document these stone walls (Nobori Ishigaki) first hand.

They are a unique feature that is only seen at a few castles (Sumoto Castle, Iyo Matsuyama Castle, Takatori Castle, some "wajo" - Japanese castle in Korea) today and may be overlooked by most visitors. Hikone Castle has probably the best such walls and with 5 of them, certainly the most. Typically stone walls run horizontally fortifying around the base of baileys but these run vertically up the mountain preventing attackers from accessing the castle at a different point and crossing the side of the mountain to get to the more vital areas. If you look at the map below you'll see how the 5 stone walls further section off the palace and honmaru areas. Of the 5 walls, numbers 1-4 in the photo below are accessible and can be seen in the photos below.

Gallery
  • Stone wall #1
  • Stone wall #1
  • Stone wall #1
  • Stone wall #2
  • Stone wall #2
  • Stone wall #2
  • Stone wall #3
  • Stone wall #3
  • Stone wall #3
  • Stone wall #3
  • Stone wall #4
  • Stone wall #4
  • Stone wall #4
  • Loading map...