Matsumoto Castle Coloring Pages

Among the castles that still stand, this one is the oldest

Matsumoto Castle in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, is a rare castle! Its main tower, built before the Edo period, was never destroyed. It is said to be the oldest five-tiered, six-story castle tower in Japan. When you look at it from the outside, it has five roofs stacked up, but when you go inside, it actually has six floors! It all started in the Sengoku period as a castle called Fukashi Castle.

Black and white contrast. The wooden boards are painted with lacquer

When you look at Matsumoto Castle, the first thing you notice is the clear contrast of black and white. On each story, the upper part is white plaster and the lower part is made of black boards. These black boards are painted with lacquer to protect the wood from rain and snow. Lacquer dries into a hard shell, so when you see it next to the snowy Alps around it, the black looks even deeper!

The National Treasure is five buildings connected together

It is not just the main tower of Matsumoto Castle that is a National Treasure. The big Great Keep in the middle, the Inui Small Keep connected to its left, the Roofed Passage connecting the two, plus the Tatsumi Attached Tower and the Moon-Viewing Tower on the right side—all five buildings together are the National Treasure! In your coloring page, you can see the small building on the left and the lower building connected on the right.

The "Moon-Viewing Tower" was not built for fighting

The low building on the far right is the Moon-Viewing Tower. Unlike the other parts, this is the only building that was not made for battle. It was built by the local lord to welcome the third Shogun, Iemitsu Tokugawa, when he was planning to visit Matsumoto. It has red railings around it, built especially for looking at the moon!

An upside-down Matsumoto Castle reflected in the moat

Around Matsumoto Castle, there is a moat full of water. On days with no wind, the whole castle reflects upside down on the water, making another Matsumoto Castle appear! You can find this reflection in the second and third coloring pages, too. Try coloring the stone walls and roofs as they shimmer in the water!

Townspeople saved the castle when it was almost sold off

At the start of the Meiji period, Matsumoto Castle was almost broken down and sold off. A local person named Ryozo Ichikawa and others stepped in to stop it! They gathered money to buy it back and saved the castle. Later, when the main tower began to lean, a middle school principal named Unari Kobayashi and his friends raised donations and spent ten years doing a big repair job. The Matsumoto Castle you see today is a castle protected by the townspeople!

Leave the top white, and color only the bottom black

This is the most important part when coloring Matsumoto Castle! Look at the band between the roofs. You should see a single line running across the middle. Leave the space above that line white, and color only the space below the line dark black. Be careful, because if you color the whole thing black, it won't look like Matsumoto Castle anymore!

Use a dark, bluish gray for the roof, not black

The roof is made of tiles, so a gray with a bit of blue that is a little lighter than black is perfect! If you make it different from the black on the walls, you can clearly see the five layers of curved roofs. The little round dots along the edge of the roof are the ends of the tiles. Leave these white without coloring them to make the edges of the roof stand out!

Color only the railing on the right tower vermilion

The railing on the low building on the far right is red on the real castle. Try coloring just this part with vermilion or a reddish orange! Having just one splash of red in a picture made of black, white, and gray makes the whole picture look super cool. This is the absolute best part of Matsumoto Castle!

Leave the moat white, and use light colors for the reflection

For the moat in the front, leave it white or just add a light touch of sky blue. If you color it too dark, you won't be able to see the castle reflected in the water! If you color the castle in the water one shade lighter than the real one, it will look like it is rippling. The stone wall is made of stacked natural stones, so changing the shade for neighboring stones will give it a nice, bumpy feel!

The nickname "U-jo" is not actually correct

Sometimes people say that Matsumoto Castle has the nickname "U-jo" (Crow Castle) because it is a black castle. But the Matsumoto City Board of Education says this nickname is wrong. It was not a name used in old records, but a name that spread much later. Even famous stories can turn out to be wrong when you look into them!

The main tower tilted, but not because of a curse

Back in the Meiji era, the main tower of Matsumoto Castle was tilting so much that anyone could see it. Around that time, a story spread saying, "It is the curse of a person who was punished for protesting long ago." But this story was made up in the Meiji era, after the tower started to tilt. The real cause was that the sixteen support pillars inside the stone base grew old and sank under the weight of the building.

The Moon-Viewing Turret was built because the Shogun was coming

There is a clear reason why the Moon-Viewing Turret was built. News arrived that Iemitsu Tokugawa, the third Shogun, would stop by Matsumoto on his way to visit Zenko-ji Temple. So, the lord of the castle at the time, Naomasa Matsudaira, built this turret to welcome him. However, Iemitsu's trip to Zenko-ji Temple was canceled, so the Shogun never viewed the moon from here!