Matsuyama Castle Entrance Tamon Turret

The hinge between defence and ceremony

Matsuyama Castle Entrance Tamon Turret (松山城玄関多聞櫓, Genkan Tamon Yagura) is a single-storey wooden turret in the keep compound of Matsuyama Castle in Marunouchi, Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture, rebuilt in the late Showa era and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on September 10, 2019.

A tamon turret is the long, low kind built along the top of a stone rampart, closer to a barracks block than to a tower. This one runs east from the North Corner Turret and meets the Inner Gate on its eastern half, while the formal Entrance Hall attaches to its south face towards the western end. Three of the nine registered buildings of the compound therefore touch it, which is why the national database describes it as showing the composition of the keep's entrance quarter.

The floor area is 78 square metres. The building that stood here until 1933 was lost in the same arson attack that took the small keep and the corner turrets. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the present structure as built in 1967; Matsuyama City dates the handover of the nine rebuilt structures to May 27, 1968.

Registered, not designated

Matsuyama Castle holds twenty-one structures designated as Important Cultural Properties, beginning with the great keep of 1854. Matsuyama Castle Entrance Tamon Turret is not one of them. It carries instead the registration created in 1996 for buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country, a lighter instrument that suits a faithful mid-twentieth-century rebuilding.

The rebuilding could be faithful because the drawings existed. After the surviving structures were listed under the old National Treasure law in 1935, Matsuyama City had the Ministry of Education prepare basic designs for the nine buildings destroyed two years earlier, worked up from the survey made while they still stood. Interior partitions, corridor widths and wall finishes were all recorded, which is unusual for a rebuilt castle structure and is the substance behind the registration.

What to look for

The plan is the point of interest. Inside, a corridor one bay wide runs along the south side for the length of the building. North of it, behind sliding mairado doors with their close-set horizontal rails, lies a single room. A visitor arriving by the Entrance Hall stepped up into that corridor and moved along it, screened from the room on one side and from the courtyard on the other. Circulation and enclosure are separated as cleanly as in a residence.

Outside, the treatment is military. The lower wall is faced with sasarako boarding, horizontal planks held by notched vertical battens, and above it the Shikkui plaster is carried up and across the underside of the eaves. The east end is roofed in Irimoya-zukuri with Hongawarabuki tiles. At the centre of the north face, a hooded stone-drop hatch projects from the base of the wall, aimed at the ground below the rampart.

Stand at the junction with the Entrance Hall and both characters are visible at once: a curved ceremonial gable on one side of a post, a gun position on the other.

Visiting

The interior lies on the ticketed circuit through the keep compound and visitors pass along its corridor. Hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., closing at 5:30 p.m. in August and 4:30 p.m. in December and January, with last admission 30 minutes before closing and one closed day on the third Wednesday of December. Admission is 520 yen for adults and 160 yen for elementary school pupils.

Reach the hill by Iyotetsu tram to Okaido, about 10 minutes from Matsuyama City Station or JR Matsuyama Station, then 5 minutes on foot to the Shinonome-guchi ropeway station. Ropeway and chair lift take the same ticket, 520 yen return for adults and 260 yen for children, and the upper station is a 10 minute walk below the ticket office. Walking up from Shinonome-guchi takes roughly 30 minutes. Budget about 90 minutes for the visit as a whole.

Personal photography is unrestricted, though the corridor is narrow and a wide lens helps. Live streaming, drones and large equipment are not allowed, and commercial filming requires prior application to the Matsuyama Castle office.