Matsuyama Castle Sujigane Gate

A gate named after its ironwork

Matsuyama Castle Sujigane Gate (松山城筋鉄門, Sujigane-mon) is a single-storey gatehouse standing between the great keep and the small keep 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.

Sujigane means iron strips, and the name is literal. Iron plates are nailed over the corners of the posts and at other points where the frame takes load or attack, so the timber is armoured at exactly the places an axe would be aimed. The frontage measures 3.0 metres, a single bay with one doorway and a side wicket.

The gate is a yaguramon, a gatehouse with a turret above the opening. Here that upper storey is a passage, linking the great keep to the small keep, so a defender could cross between the two without descending into the courtyard. The gate that stood here was damaged in the arson of 1933. Its replacement is recorded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as built in 1967, and by Matsuyama City as completed on May 27, 1968.

Position, and why it was registered

The keep compound has one entrance, at the Ichi-no-mon gate on the east. Anyone who forced that entrance still had to work round the inside of the ring. Matsuyama Castle Sujigane Gate, together with the San-no-mon gate, forms a masugata, a boxed gate court, on the south side of the great keep: a walled rectangular pocket where an attacker is stopped, turned, and shot at from several sides at once. The upper turret of this gate faces the San-no-mon approach directly, and the courtyard it protects is the one the formal entrance of the keep opens onto.

The Important Cultural Property designation held by twenty-one buildings at Matsuyama Castle covers only structures that survived intact, so a rebuilding cannot be included. The registration introduced in 1996 applies instead, for structures contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The rebuilding followed basic designs drawn up by the Ministry of Education after the 1935 listing, from a survey made while the gate still stood.

What to look for

Look at the posts first. The iron strips are not decorative and were not made to be admired; they sit flush at the arrises, dark against the timber, and the pattern of nail heads follows the line of the plate. Once you have seen them here, the plain posts of other gates on the hill look noticeably more vulnerable.

At each end of the upper passage, a pair of tsuchido closes the opening. These doors are built up in earth and plaster over a wooden core and were meant to hold back fire as much as attackers, an obvious concern in a compound where every building touches the next.

The exterior finish continues from the great keep without a break: boarding at the base, Shikkui plaster above, carried across the underside of the eaves. Because the gate sits between two much taller buildings, its roof has no gable ends, the ridge simply running from one to the other with eaves on both sides, tiled in Hongawarabuki. Stand in the pocket between this gate and the San-no-mon and the enclosure becomes physical: stone on two sides, buildings on the others, and a rectangle of sky overhead.

Visiting

Matsuyama Castle Sujigane Gate is passed through on the ticketed circuit within the keep compound. 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 annual closure on the third Wednesday of December. Admission is 520 yen for adults and 160 yen for elementary school pupils.

The tram from Matsuyama City Station or JR Matsuyama Station reaches Okaido in about 10 minutes, and the Shinonome-guchi ropeway station is 5 minutes away on foot. Ropeway and chair lift share a return ticket, 520 yen for adults and 260 yen for children, with a 10 minute walk from the upper station to the ticket office. The walk up from Shinonome-guchi takes about 30 minutes.

Photography for personal use is unrestricted, and the ironwork on the posts repays a close frame. Live streaming, drones and large equipment are prohibited; commercial shoots need prior application to the castle office.