In Matsumoto there’s the castle that actually is older than the one in Himeji, also the original one. When I was close to the entrance of the castle, a woman approached me (she was almost running to catch me) and asked me if I would like to accept to make a tour with her, it’s for free and it takes 1,5 hours. Of course I accepted and I am glad that she insisted, because the amount and quality of the information she gave me was pure gold. I remembered the same visit that I made at the Himeji castle, where I looked at a pretty building with empty rooms and I didn’t get anything and everything that I could do was to just go to the last floor, see the view and leave.
One very important information was the explanation of the very high stairs (very hard to climb): it was to make it hard for the enemy to attack the castle. This castle has a lot of security tricks, but was actually never attacked.
The entrance to the castle is a medieval mantrap. There are actually two gates, but the second one is in the completely different direction than the one where the castle is, to create confusion and also to trap the enemy in case of an attack and kill with arrows and guns.
There is a hidden floor, it’s not known how it was used, probably also to create confusion and annihilate the enemy.
The guns were introduced in Japan by the Portuguese. They showed the Japanese how they work and the Japanese bought two guns from them with lots of money so that they can understand how it works and copy them.
This is an original samurai armor:
The view from the castle, last floor:
On the ceiling at the last floor there’s a small Shinto shrine that is supposed to protect the castle:
This has also an explanation: the yellow thick ropes are the clouds, the white are lightning and the thin yellow ropes that fall is rain. This is the symbol of a Shinto shrine, the rain, which was very important for the agriculture, the main activity of the Japanese people at the creation of this religion. When Buddhism was introduced in Japan, people were “kindly asked” to accept Buddhism as their new religion. Nowadays, where there’s a temple, there’s also a shrine. The temples are Buddhist and shrines are Shinto.
Included in the ticket to the castle there’s also the entrance to the museum next to it. Here I could see some beautiful works (with description):
Streets in Matsumoto:
