{"id":64,"date":"2009-03-30T10:27:50","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T14:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/?p=64"},"modified":"2018-07-27T17:54:51","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T17:54:51","slug":"japanese-castles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/japanese-castles\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Castles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like the medieval castles of Europe, the castles of Japan were meant to be a fortress against attacks.\u00a0 The general term for castle is shiro (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u57ce<\/strong><\/span>), but when the word for castle is a proper noun, the\u00a0word castle is pronounced as joo (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u57ce<\/strong><\/span>) is attached.\u00a0 For example Chihaya castle would be pronounced as chihayajoo (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u5343\u65e9\u57ce<\/strong><\/span>) not chihayashiro (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u5343\u65e9\u57ce<\/strong><\/span>).\u00a0\u00a0Some of the castles reflect a\u00a0military sensibility\u00a0rather than a mansion built for royalty.\u00a0 Some of the most famous castles in Japan are located in harsh terrain.\u00a0 Castles located in the mountains\u00a0were called yamashiro (<strong>\u5c71\u57ce<\/strong>).\u00a0 Castles surrounded by water were called mizuki (<strong>\u6c34\u57ce<\/strong>), while those hidden by low elevation are called hirayamashiro (<strong>\u5e73\u5c71\u57ce<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>Some of the many impressive castles contained the yagura (<strong>\u6ad3<\/strong>), which were towers used to view the enemy from below.\u00a0 There were tiny slits called yasama (<strong>\u3084\u3055\u307e<\/strong>), where arrows could pass through, and even bigger holes for taihosama (<strong>\u305f\u3044\u307b\u3055\u307e<\/strong>), where cannons could be shot through the air.<\/p>\n<p>If the\u00a0daimyoo (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u5927\u540d<\/strong><\/span>) was especially rich and powerful, he had smaller castles called shijoo (<strong>\u3057\u3058\u3087\u304a<\/strong>), in which lower ranking samurai (<span class=\"match\"><strong>\u3055\u3080\u3089\u3044<\/strong><\/span>) lived.\u00a0 The daimyoo (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u5927\u540d<\/strong><\/span>) or lord lived in the honjoo (<strong>\u307b\u3093\u3058\u3087\u304a<\/strong>) or the main castle.\u00a0 That way, if the daimyoo (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u5927\u540d<\/strong><\/span>) was attacked, he had the convenient disposal of warriors ready at all times.\u00a0 Some of the castles that remain today stretch for many miles on end, and from a bird&#8217;s eye view you can see the main castle surrounded and protected by the smaller castles.<\/p>\n<p>Although many castles are being restored and preserved for future generations, there are many castles are only survive in bits and pieces of stone.\u00a0 Many of the castles were destroyed in WWII and only the stone bases remain.\u00a0 Despite that, archaeologists have been able to see and learn what specific castles looked like by the records left by the previous residents of the castle.\u00a0 Luckily today,\u00a0the castles are used as museums and for sight-seeing, not for\u00a0military purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like the medieval castles of Europe, the castles of Japan were meant to be a fortress against attacks.\u00a0 The general term for castle is shiro (\u57ce), but when the word for castle is a proper noun, the\u00a0word castle is pronounced as joo (\u57ce) is attached.\u00a0 For example Chihaya castle would be pronounced as chihayajoo (\u5343\u65e9\u57ce)&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/japanese-castles\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2737],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-japanese-castles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6256,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/6256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}