日本城堡

在现代日本光鲜亮丽的外表背后，还保留着一些令人惊讶地保存完好的遗迹，包括该国封建历史、军阀和战斗武士、幕府将军和被隔离的皇帝、王子和农民。这本书生动地展示了日本的城堡，总共有80多座，从北客家岛的松美到南九州的鹿儿岛
作者不仅从史学家和观光者的角度，对这一敏感的研究带来了丰富的知识，而且对日本和日本事物有着深刻的感情。他解释说，大多数日本城堡都是在16世纪末的几十年里建成的。德川幕府当时正在巩固其权力，地方领主们正在为敌人的袭击做好准备，这些敌人最近从西方获得了武器。
城堡建筑是日本最原始的建筑形式之一，体现了一种恶魔般敏锐的防御能力。一个不小心的敌人，如果他不小心的话，可能会冲进一个真正的恐怖石室——下降的斜槽、隐藏的大门、急剧弯曲的通道、淹没的护城河、活板门和发出吱吱声警告入侵者到来的地板。在日本风格中，许多法院甚至设有专门的自杀法庭。
Castles in Japan
Behind the glossy facade of modern Japan there survive remnants—some of them surprisingly well preserved—of the country’s feudal past, of warlords and fighting samurai, of shoguns and sequestered emperors, of princes and peasants. This book vividly presents the castles of Japan, more than 80 of them altogether, ranging geographically from Matsumae on the northern island of Hakkaido to Kagoshima in southern Kyushu
The author brings not only an immense knowledge but also a deep feeling for Japan and things Japanese to this sensitive study, formed from both the historian’s and the sightseer’s perspectives. Most of the Japanese castles, he explains, were built in several amazing decades at the end of the 16th century. The Tokugawa shogunate was then consolidating its power and local lords were girding themselves for the onslaughts of enemies supplied with that recent acquisition fro the West—firearms.
Castle architecture, among the most original of Japanese architectural forms, manifested a diabolically shrewd defense capability. An unwary enemy, if unwary he were, might charge into a veritable chamber of horrors—stone–dropping chutes, hidden gates, sharply–curved passageways, flooded moats, trap doors, and floor boards that squeaked to warn of an intruder’s arrival. In Japanese style, many even contained special suicide courts.

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