Hiroyasu Imura spent 19 years pursuing his boyhood dream of faithfully producing a replica of Himeji Castle in Hyogo Prefecture. The 69-year-old former insurance examiner completed his model of Himeji Castle at a scale of 1:23 in the garden of his home in Ise, Mie Prefecture, in April. His wife, Ikuko, 66, gave him a book containing photographs of the castle on his 47th birthday. He saw a drawing of the castle in the book and made up his mind to build a replica.
Imura bought a plot of land in the town of Enza in Ise, which has a beautiful view of mountains unhindered by the sight of power lines — a setting he thought would be perfect for the replica. He moved to the town and began building the model in 1989, using experience he gained as a joiner during his youth. After retiring at age 60, Imura devoted his life to building the replica. He used reinforced plastic material for the structure and carved patterns on wooden molds to show the unevenness of roof tiles.
Imura also studied reference materials to reproduce structures that no longer exist. He made repeated trips to Himeji Castle to confirm details in drawings and to count the number of stones in stairways. He once dropped a rope surreptitiously to measure the height of a stone wall while trying to avoid being noticed by a security guard.
His most difficult challenge was reproducing the stone walls. He bought stone plates, broke them into pieces several centimeters in size and then assembled the pieces in molds to reproduce the slanting walls of the castle. Concrete was poured into the molds to solidify them — a process that took 12 years to complete.
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