Similarities Between European And Japanese Castles

Depending on the historical, geographical and cultural context, each region will have its own signature architectural design and techniques that seem to embody the whole essence of that region’s past, such as the Gothic churches and cathedrals in Europe or the temples and shrines in Asia. However, even with several regional distinctions, there are still some striking similarities in the architecture of places that had not established any former contacts. One of such cases of similarity is between the castles in Europe and in Japan. Most of the castles whose vestiges remain to this day were the result of a long military evolution. In the case of Europe, wars and crusades throughout the 11th and 12th century led to rapid construction of castles
No mortar was used, making them the world’s greatest dry stone walls. At first sight the walls look as if the stones were placed haphazardly, but in fact they followed a very careful geometric arrangement whereby the stones settled into a compact solidness through their own weights (p.24). The small walls of plaster and ground rock on top of the bases would be pierced with openings - triangular for guns, rectangle for arrows. These walls added greatly to the aesthetic of the castle.
To a large extent stone bases are the essence of “Japanese castles” of the Sengoku Period and it is also with stone bases that comparisons can be made with the European bastions. A European bastion was built entirely from scratch, either from stone or from earth, while a Japanese one tended to be carved from natural slopes and then clad in stones. Stone castle bases sloped dramatically outwards, as did European artillery bastions, but the geometrical reasoning behind them was very different. The horizontal geometry of a European bastion was primarily concerned with discovering the ideal angle for providing covering fire with no blind spots, and its vertical geometry was designed to keep to a minimum the amount of soil that would spill out after bombardment. The Japanese considerations were more ones of strength, both to hold back the inner core and to take the weight of a keep. There
The European keep or donjon was high, massive and vertical, and its foundations were strong and resistant in order to help to distribute the huge weight of the building. Walls were always very thick in order to resist the battering ram; they were often reinforced with powerful masonry buttresses (p.46). It was composed of a various number of stories with the summit fitted with a roof and wall-walk, allowing guards to watch over the surrounding countryside and providing a place for active defense. Quite similarly, the Japanese tenshu kaku was typically of many stories, maybe even as many as seven. Unlike anywhere else in the castle, the windows, roofs and gables of the keep were arranged in subtle and intricate patterns. The shape of the keep’s roof was almost without exception in the ornate style that had been used for centuries for the most palatial residence, tiled with thick blue-grey Japanese tiles, with ornaments in the shape of fish as charms against evil spirit and