Matsuyama Castle Ten-Bay Corridor

Ten bays of wall between two turrets

Matsuyama Castle Ten-Bay Corridor (松山城十間廊下, Jukken Roka) is a single-storey wooden turret linking the south and north corner turrets of the keep compound at 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.

The name is a measurement. Jukken means ten Ken, the bay interval used to size traditional Japanese buildings, and the corridor takes its name from a beam length of ten of them. At 117 square metres it is the largest of the nine registered structures in the compound, larger even than the small keep.

Its position explains its size. The compound forms a closed quadrangle, and this building fills the whole west side of it, facing the Inui gate approach at the rear of the castle. Attackers who worked their way round to the back of the hill met this wall first. What burned in the arson of 1933 was the corridor completed in 1854; the present structure is recorded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as built in 1967, with Matsuyama City giving the completion date of the nine rebuilt structures as May 27, 1968.

Why the register applies here

The twenty-one buildings at Matsuyama Castle that survived into the modern era are designated Important Cultural Property. The rebuilt ones are not eligible for that, and Matsuyama Castle Ten-Bay Corridor instead carries the registration introduced in 1996 for structures contributing to the historic landscape of Japan.

The register is not a consolation prize here. After the 1935 listing of the surviving structures under the old National Treasure law, the Ministry of Education produced basic designs for the nine buildings lost two years earlier, based on a survey of them made before the fire. The reconstruction followed those drawings in timber rather than the reinforced concrete used for several other castle rebuildings of the same decades. The distinction matters: concrete replicas of the 1950s and 1960s are generally not registered, and timber ones built to documented designs sometimes are.

What to look for

Go inside and look up. The corridor is a single undivided room with no ceiling boards, so the wagoya roof frame, the standard Japanese post-and-beam truss, is left exposed with beams and rafters visible along the full length. Few castle interiors let you read the structure this directly.

Then look along the west wall. Loopholes are set in an even rank down its length, square ones for muskets and rectangular ones for arrows. Their regularity is the visual argument of the building: a hundred and seventeen square metres given over to covering a single approach. Three hooded stone-drop hatches project from the outside of that same wall.

The roof form is worth noticing from outside. Because the corridor runs between two taller turrets, it has no gable ends of its own; the ridge runs the length of the building with eaves falling to both sides, tiled in Hongawarabuki. The plaster and boarded finishes continue without a break from the turret at each end, so the three buildings read as one wall from a distance. The best place to see that effect is the path west of the compound, below the Shichiku Gate.

The interior is also used for display, so the corridor doubles as the exhibition space of the keep circuit.

Visiting

Matsuyama Castle Ten-Bay Corridor is entered as part of the ticketed route through the keep compound. Hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., extended to 5:30 p.m. in August and shortened to 4:30 p.m. in December and January, with last admission 30 minutes before closing and a single annual closure on the third Wednesday of December. Admission is 520 yen for adults and 160 yen for elementary school pupils.

From Matsuyama City Station or JR Matsuyama Station, take the Iyotetsu tram to Okaido, about 10 minutes, then walk 5 minutes to the Shinonome-guchi ropeway station. Ropeway and chair lift share one ticket at 520 yen return for adults and 260 yen for children; from the upper station it is a further 10 minutes on foot. Walking up instead takes about 30 minutes. Ninety minutes covers the round trip and the keep.

Personal photography is unrestricted throughout, and the exposed roof frame photographs well in the light from the loopholes. Live streaming, drones and large equipment are prohibited, and commercial shoots need prior application to the castle office.