Okayama-jō Castle, Okayama, Japan

Okayama-jō 岡山城 Castle is situated in the middle of Okayama City, about three hours west of Tōkyō 東京 and one hour west of Kyōto 京都. Originally built at the very end of the 16th century, a few years before the start of the Edo-jidai 江戸時代 period, it was destroyed -- like so many other castles in Japan -- by bombing during World War II and rebuilt in the 1960s. Cloaked in panels of black wood, it is commonly known as U-jō烏城 "Crow Castle" or Kin-u-jō金烏城 "Golden Crow Castle" in contrast to two other famous Japanese castles: Matsumoto-jō (Karasu-jō 烏城 "Crow Castle:" the Chinese character is the same but the pronunciation is different) in Nagano prefecture, and Himeji-jō (Shirasagi-jō or Hakuro-jō 白鷺城 "White Egret Castle") in Hyōgo prefecture.

Okayama 岡山 is a nice place to visit: the city is located on the coast of the Seto-naikai 瀬戸内海 Inland Sea, just opposite the island of Shikoku 四国, and the rest of the prefecture, stretching north up to the very backbone of Honshu 本州, is full of hills and mountains (oka-yama literally means "hill-mountain" in Japanese), castles, picturesque rice paddy terraces and woodland. Like many other castles in Japan, Okayama-jō is surrounded by parkland and attached to a famous garden, Kōraku-en 後楽園. Kōraku-en is actually one of the three most famous gardens in Japan, the Nihon Sanmei-en 日本三名園, started at the beginning of the seventeeth century by the Lord of Okayama, Ikeda Tsunamasa 池田綱政. I spent a number of years coming to Okayama on an annual basis and while I didn't stay in Okayama City, I did always enjoying stopping off there to visit, and I would recommend you do the same if you are ever lucky enough to be in the region: I guarantee you don't have to be a former art history student to appreciate it!

The main tenshu-kaku 天守閣 (keep) seen from just outside the castle walls

Another view of the main tenshu-kaku seen from just outside the castle walls

One of the interesting things about the architecture of Japanese castles (and most of Japanese art and architecture in general) is that they share a common vocabulary, faithfully reproducing a number of set visual elements, all with a specific meaning. One such common element is the shachi 鯱: a mythical being, half carp and half tiger, said to have the power to control rainfall. Because Japanese castles were made of wood (built upon a stone base), they were very susceptible to fire, and so shachi were soon adopted as guardian creatures, their highly decorated forms incorporated into the roof structure in a suitably high position.

A close-up, taken from inside the castle, of the decorated gable-ends: you can see one of the two shachi 鯱 roof ornaments

An almost too-stereotypical-to-be-true sight in Kōraku-en 後楽園 park: a heron sitting calmly opposite a stone lantern

I am a big fan of both trees and Japanese landscape architecture, so I also enjoy the chance to watch Japanese gardeners at work, carefully training and pruning the oversize-bonsai-like pine trees

A stone path crossing a little man-made stream in Kōraku-en 後楽園

One of the original buildings in the park, the Enyo-tei 延養亭 Pavillion: boarded up when not in use, it still manages to look very elegant

The famous yatsu-hashi 八つ橋 foot-bridge and kaki-tsubata かきつばた irises in Kōraku-en 後楽園

One more common and immediately recognisable element in the Japanese visual vocabulary is the yatsu-hashi 八つ橋 eight-fold wooden foot-bridge. Appearing on folding screens, fans, writing boxes and many other art objects, the yats-hashi is a direct reference to a poem in the Ise Monogatari 伊勢物語, a famous Heian-jidai 平安時代 period (794-1185) work of literature, in which a lost court noble besides an eigh-tfold bridge over a marsh of irises and composes lonely poems.

Another view of the yatsu-hashi 八つ橋 foot-bridge in Kōraku-en 後楽園: you can see all eight planks this time!

A little tea-house set on an island in the park, accessible via a wooden bridge: it may look pretty but I always think they must have been very to walk on in wooden sandals

Another view of the bridge linking the tea-house to the rest of the park, complete with boat and boat-hut

A stone footpath and bamboo fence leading up a Yuishin-zan 唯心山, a man-made hill in Kōraku-en 後楽園, designed as the ideal place from which to view the castle

You can read my other articles on Japanese castles here: Bitchu-Matsuyama-jo Castle, Bitchu-Takahashi, Japan and here: Matsuyama-jō Castle, Takamatsu, Japan.

All photos published in this article were taken by and belong to myself, Nick Sikorski

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Nick Sikorski is an organic market gardener and permaculture designer originally from Scotland, trained in France and now farming in Nagano, Japan.
When he's not obsessing over heritage varieties of vegetables & herbs, chasing off wild deer or otherwise running around the fields of his mountain farm, he's trying to beat the system, taking photos or trying to better understand cryptocurrencies.
You can find his Steemit introduction here
You can find out more about his farm here: @potagerdescerfs