Matsuyama Castle Tsutsui Gate East Adjoining Turret

The turret that turns a corner

Matsuyama Castle Tsutsui Gate East Adjoining Turret (松山城筒井門東続櫓, Tsutsui-mon Higashi Tsuzuki Yagura) is a single-storey wooden turret extending east from the Tsutsui Gate at the lower level of the main enclosure of Matsuyama Castle in Marunouchi, Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture, rebuilt in 1971 and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 29, 2022.

An adjoining turret is one that continues directly from the upper storey of a gatehouse along the top of a rampart, and this one does something more than run in a straight line. After extending east it bends and projects forward to the south, so its end block faces the approach head on. The floor area is 48 square metres.

Like the gate it belongs to, the previous turret was destroyed in the arson attack of 1949 and rebuilt in timber, completed in March 1971. The three structures of this group, gate and two turrets, were registered together in 2022.

Registered as part of a fortification line

The Important Cultural Property designation at Matsuyama Castle covers twenty-one structures that survived, and a rebuilding cannot join them. The register introduced in 1996 applies instead, for works contributing to the historic landscape of Japan.

Registering the two adjoining turrets alongside the gate rather than separately reflects how the group works. The gate alone would be a doorway; with the turrets it becomes a wall with a doorway in it, and the projecting east end gives that wall an angle from which the ground in front of the gate can be swept. Matsuyama City makes the same point when it describes the rebuilding as a faithful timber reconstruction on the basis of existing records, valuable for showing the castle as it stood under the domain administration.

What to look for

The roof tells you the shape of the plan. A ridge runs east and west, continuous with the roof over the gate's turret storey, finished in Irimoya-zukuri with Hongawarabuki tiles. Where the building turns south, a second hip-and-gable roof is set over the projection, so the silhouette breaks and steps forward. Read from the approach path, the two roofs together mark the corner.

The south wall, which faces anyone climbing towards the gate, is built as a taiko wall, a double skin packed against musket fire, with square and rectangular loopholes set into it. Below, the base of the wall is faced with sasarako boarding, horizontal planks held by notched vertical battens, and the Shikkui plaster above runs up across the underside of the eaves.

Then look east. The Kakuremon stands immediately beyond, a small hidden gate designated an Important Cultural Property and thought to date from around 1600. It is built right up against this turret, yet Matsuyama City records that the two share neither walls nor posts. One is a survivor of the founding period, the other a reconstruction of the 1970s, standing shoulder to shoulder without touching.

Visiting

Matsuyama Castle Tsutsui Gate East Adjoining Turret is outside the ticketed area and can be seen without charge from the approach to the Honmaru courtyard. The interior is not open to visitors, so the turret is an exterior subject; the best view of the projecting south end is from the path below, looking up as you approach the gate.

From the ropeway or chair lift at Chojagadaira, the walk down past the Tonashimon and up to the Tsutsui Gate takes about 5 minutes. From the Ninomaru side, the Kuromonguchi approach reaches the Honmaru courtyard in roughly 40 minutes on stone steps. Ropeway and chair lift share a return ticket at 520 yen for adults and 260 yen for children, and the keep compound further on is a separate 520 yen and 160 yen.

Ropeway hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and the gate itself is opened and closed at set times. Photography for personal use is unrestricted; live streaming, drones and large equipment are prohibited, and commercial filming requires prior application to the Matsuyama Castle office.