White Roofs and Long Walls

The castle grounds open out at the top of the hill. They feel more like a walled plateau than a fortress. Long stone walls run beside a dry moat. They are low and wide, not tall. Above them lies a flat green field where the main tower once stood. Polly walked along the top of one wall.

The roofs here are white. They are not painted or made of clay. The tiles are lead. Lead turns a soft chalky grey in the weather, and it looks white against the sky. People here say that in a war the roof could be melted down to make ammunition.

The walls are a museum of stonework. In one part the stones are rough, fitted by eye. In another they are cut square and pushed so close that a knife will not fit between them. Elsewhere long flat stones form a pattern. The Maeda lords were the richest in Japan after the shogun, so they could pay for beauty as well as defence.

The castle burned more than once. It was rebuilt from old drawings, with no nails. The Ishikawa gate is older, rebuilt in seventeen eighty-eight. Polly sat on its pale roof.