午夜剧场

Kumamoto Castle is counted among Japan's three most famous castles and is particularly renowned for the aesthetic beauty of its high stone walls, known as the Seisho style. However, these stone walls are all merely traces of buildings; originally, turrets (yagura) stood atop them without a single gap. Fortunately, this grand sight can be seen in many clear old photographs taken in the early Meiji era. Furthermore, because measured floor plans from the Edo period exist and the stone wall remains are in good condition, I had a premonition that I could approach the true image quite accurately and create a model with a high degree of approximation.

However, the power of Kumamoto Castle overwhelms the viewer precisely because they are standing in that location within a full-scale space; I thought that its charm could surely never be reproduced even if reduced to a model. Before the Kumamoto Earthquake, a plan was underway at Kumamoto Castle to restore most of the buildings within the Honmaru (inner bailey). I thought that one day I would be able to see its former appearance at full scale, so until that was realized, I was content to enjoy my own "restoration" within my thoughts and imagine the figures from the old photographs standing atop the stone walls.

April 2016, the Kumamoto Earthquake.

It was three months later that I finally visited the collapsed Kumamoto Castle. The emotions that welled up in me then are still impossible to put into words even now.

When a publisher proposed a book project themed around Kumamoto Castle, I decided without hesitation to model the entire Honmaru area. The period of reproduction was set to 1870, the time of the castle's decommissioning, at a scale of 1/150. For each individual building, I counted the roof tiles and components in old photographs, calculated the dimensions, and constructed them into 3D forms atop the survey maps of the stone walls. Kumamoto Castle has many turrets with irregular floor plans, and many were extremely difficult to three-dimensionalize. I drew lines on old photographs, observed the way shadows fell, and clarified how the irregular roofs were fitted. This included new discoveries and parts that were materialized for the first time; these are points that will also be challenges in the actual physical restoration, and the day will surely come when they prove useful.

The character "模" (mo/model) also carries the meaning of "to explore." I published the entire process of exploring the form of the buildings through the literal act of three-dimensionalization as "The Record of the Transcendent Reproduction of Kumamoto Castle: The True Image of the Honmaru Revived Through a Giant Diorama" (Shinkigensha).

Modeling is not simply copying a shape, but also exploring and verifying it. At the same time, as long as I am reproducing aesthetic structures like castles and ancient architecture, I must also capture their aesthetic value. I want to continue to represent and share the charm of Japanese architecture.