Crow castle. Matsumoto, Japan

Joyce Belfort

9 years ago

Stark with moat and a red bridge. This is the Matsumoto-jo, also known as the crow castle. Coincidently, tons of big (fat) crows can be spotted in the vicinity. The dark colour comes from a combination of wood and stone.

Matsumoto castle is an original keep from 1500s! It is only damaged by earthquake and neglect (was tilting like Pisa), but it is all good now. It is listed as a national treasure of Japan. Madness to think that at some stage the Japanese considered demolition.

There are only 12 original castles in Japan:

Himeji, Hyogo prefecture **Largest and best preserved; never fallen, hence called ‘the white hero’. She is the only one that is listed as UNESCO world heritage.
Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture
Matsue, Shimane prefecture
Bitchu-Matsuyama, Okayama prefecture
Maruoka, Fukui prefecture
Hikone, Shiga prefecture
Hirosaki, Aomori prefecture ==> feature 400+ years old Sakura tree…
Inuyama, Aichi prefecture
Kochi, Kochi prefecture
Marugame, Kagawa prefecture
Uwajime, Ehime prefecture
Iyo-Matusyama, Ehime prefecture

Everything else are replica / reconstruction. I will do a bit more castle posts. Please hang in there.

The garden around the Matsumoto castle was pleasant and well groomed. I was too obsessed with trying to take a perfect reflection shot, so I sat around the moat like an idiot waiting for the light to change…

There were benches next to the moat. It was just perfect for hanging around to wait for the correct lighting. I didn’t do the 10 hour craziness like Miyajima, I only waited for 2.5 hours for this one. After 100 shot of failure, I called it a day >_< perhaps better luck for me next time.

Matsumoto city walk was well worth it. The below photo was of a book store that has been around for 100+ years. The building was the original thing. It looked like such a misfit next to its modern neighbours. The frog sculpture was not Naruto related. I was fooled too.