Part I: First Impressions

You first see it from the train as you’re coming in from Nishi-Akashi. It sort of pops out of nowhere, on the right side, peeking from behind the hills. It disappears behind the buildings as the 300-series Shinkansen slides into Himeji station; you don’t see it again until you’re about halfway up Otemae street. On especially fine days, it stands out in sharp relief against a blue sky, the white walls brilliant with reflected light, the black tile roof cutting an edge in the air. Himeji-jo is probably the one castle you need to see if you go to Japan — it is the “canonical” castle, the one that everyone points to as an example of Japanese castle construction. And it a damned impressive example it is.

There have been fortifications in Himeji since 1333. Norimura Akamatsu built the first fort; his son, Sadanori built up the surrounding area. The original castle was built sometime in the middle of the 16th century (no one is precisely sure when), and the first of the three moat systems was dug in 1601. (The outer moat, for those who are interested, would have been about where the train station is today. It’s roughly a 1,200m walk from the train station to the castle. You figure it out.) The castle, as it stands today, was completed in 1618 and survived fire, earthquakes, World War II bombings, and UN oversight.

As you walk through the buildings and the courtyards you see the defensive systems of the castle stone-throwing holes and weapons racks everywhere, hidden rooms from which soldiers could launch ambushes on unsuspecting invaders, sluiceways for boiling water and oil), you’re struck by a powerful sense of connection with the past. Even before you reach the castle itself, you’re reminded of it — the massive earthworks that formed some of the outer walls sit next to shops, penned in by sidewalks and bounded by streets. You don’t really think of it until the sign you’re standing next to draws your attention to it: Lots of cities use rock formations as decorations on street corners. And then you realize you’re staring at what was a wall.

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon thinking about how humanity communicates with itself through time. The castle is a good example — some of the basic fortifications that Akamastu built in 1333 are still here, albeit in highly modified forms. I wonder what he would have thought, had he known that nearly 700 years later people would look back on his accomplishments in awe. My guess is that he probably wouldn’t have thought anything — because it wouldn’t have even been a consideration. Humans have a habit of building things because they serve some useful purpose other than telling a story; that they survive well into the future, and tell a story along the way, is beside the point. Call it a side effect. I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics right now but ours might be the first era where we build monuments for the sake of building monuments — for purely secular reasons, if you will. Every other major civilization built monuments for some other purpose.

This has been something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about over the past two years or so. We build monuments that last hundreds of years but with a few notable exceptions they are not designed to communicate a specific message; we don’t worry about telling future generations stories through the things that we build. Instead we hope that any message we have is passed down through oral traditions and mythology (like religion). I thought about the Waste Isolation Pilot Project marker problem — humanity’s first conscious effort to communicate with itself, for ten thousand years into the future, my generation’s enduring monument to itself.

Himeji-jo, maybe more than the shrines and temples, harkens back to something that doesn’t really exist anymore. You can practice Shinto or Buddhism today, and so the shrines and temples have a reason to exist today. But you can’t be a feudal lord in Japan anymore. 1868 changed all that, when the whole Shogunate system went up in smoke with the Meiji restoration. All that’s left now are places like Himeji-jo — that generation’s enduring monument to itself, for the future. An accidental monument.

Part II: Not Just A Burget Joint In New Jersey

I decided that with my banged-up body I needed to take it easy today. No more long hikes through the city, no whirlwind attempts to make it to every site I wanted to see. Instead, I woke up in my own time, checked out of my hotel, and wandered around the Kyoto station area for about an hour while I waited for my train, Hikari 307 (incidentally, the very same train I came to Kyoto on).

We arrived in Himeji under threatening skies. There were dark clouds on the western horizon and I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I lost another day on this trip because of crappy weather?” By the time I walked the 450 linear meters from the shinkansen platform to the front of the station it was pouring rain. Thank god my hotel was within rock-throwing distance and a good portion of the walk was covered; I checked in, dropped my bags, and contemplated my next move. The idea of spending the afternoon in the hotel was not hugely appealing, though I have to confess I was OK with it if that’s what was going to happen. It seemed strange to me to think that when I left Kyoto it had been warm, a little windy, and sunny, and now, after an hour’s train ride, it looked like it wanted to hurl lightning bolts — but then I realized that an hour’s train ride on a shinkansen gets you about 270 kilometers away from where you started. Did I mention that those suckers are fast? They’re fast.

I kept poking my head out the window every 10 minutes to see what the weather was doing. By 14:45 the rain had stopped and the clouds had parted, giving rise to what turned out to be.. well, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

It was the weather that I had packed for. Cool enough that the fleece jacket I packed didn’t seem like such a stupid idea; warm enough that when it came time to do some serious hiking it was OK to take the jacket off. If you could find a sunny spot out of the wind, it was very warm. Just right for the middle of October, if you ask me. Scattered clouds remained after the departure of the rainstorm, and I decided that I’d walk up towards the castle. The good bits closed at 16:30, and it takes about 90 minutes to do the whole thing, so I figured I’d try my luck.

And how.

A word about Himeji: My guidebooks describe this as a drab town of about 480,000. I can’t really disagree. Himeji lacks the punch even of towns I’ve seen from the train. Pulling in I thought, “I planned to stay here overnight why, again?” But then I went and walked around, and the place has a definite charm to it. For starters, it’s not maddeningly big, and we’ve already established I don’t like maddeningly big. It exists on a scale that is immediately understandable — what you see is essentially what you get. Weirdly enough, my thought, walking up Otemae, was that it reminded me of Lethbridge. Not in terms of size, of course, but in terms of feel — the wide, spacious sidewalks, the low-rise buildings, the small shops with the faded signage. It’s not Japan’s classiest place, but it is a functional one, and it may well be more representative of average life in this country than Tokyo. (Did somebody call for a sweeping generalization?)

I like it here, even if I can’t quite put my finger on why.

I have a theory, though. At 16:15, while I was wandering around Himeji castle, something magical happened. I had come damn close to praying for this, since it had been fricking hard to come by during this trip. I’ve had haze, I’ve had overcast skies, I’ve had pouring rain. Until this happened, I was beginning to give up hope.

What happened was this: I poked my head out of a window in the main tower of Himeji-jo and my breath caught in my throat. It was the light — the absolute best kind of light for a photographer that doesn’t involve getting up at sunrise or breaking out the tripod. I have come to know this light well. It is the fall light of Victoria, the kind we get maybe two or three times a month from September through to early December, a golden, pure, radiant light that makes everything glow. Light, so muted for me on this trip, so uncooperative and harsh, had decided to cooperate for one beautiful hour. I couldn’t have been happier. I would have been happier had Koko-en, the park next to the castle, been open; the fact that it closed its gates at 16:30, just as the light was getting good, kinda honked me off. But that was OK. I got the pictures I wanted of the castle, in the light that I had been craving. It was awesome. Thinking about it now, I’m smiling. For the first time on this trip I could include as much of the sky as I wanted in a frame without worrying about it being washed or wrecking my metering. For the first time I wasn’t afraid to go super-wide, minimizing close features in order to put the castle in perspective, show it in its entire grandeur, punch it up to the level it deserves. Himeji-jo loomed large in my mind, and I wanted to show it as best I could. Today, I got exactly the light I needed to do that, and I couldn’t be happier.

(I’m really reluctant to say this, because I’m worried I’ll jinx something, but: If I can have one more day with light like today’s, I will call this trip a smashing success. If that day happens to be Sunday, while I’m on Miyajima, I think I’ll be so overjoyed I might break down and cry.)

Part III: It Worked So Well Yesterday