How Did the Shinchō Kōki Count Azuchi Castle’s Seven Storeys?

A fresh translation

Original text

Words and terms

• Tenshu (天主)
  The word used in this witness for the central multilevel structure at Azuchi. It is kept in romanization because “tower,” “keep,” and “castle” each carry assumptions the passage itself does not state.
• Arrangement (次第)
  An ordered account. What follows is not a passing compliment but a sequence organized by level.
• Stone base (石くら)
  The masonry base and its interior space. The three lines make that interior part of the count.
• First level (一重)
  The level within the stone base, used as a storehouse. The next paragraph of the chronicle begins with the second level above the stone base.
• Ken (間)
  A traditional unit. The article leaves “twelve ken” untranslated rather than impose a modern conversion on wording whose architectural interpretation requires care.

The description starts before the painted rooms

Azuchi is often remembered through gold, lacquer, painted rooms, dragons, phoenixes, and an upper octagon. All of those details appear later in the same section. The opening, however, begins with stone and counting.

First comes a heading: the arrangement of the tenshu. Next comes the height attributed to the stone base. Then the chronicler tells the reader how the levels are numbered. The space inside the stone base is the first level and serves as a storehouse. From that basis, the building is counted as seven levels.

This order prevents the most spectacular rooms from floating free of the structure that held them. Before the paintings receive names, the chronicle fixes a lower interior, its use, and its place in the numerical sequence.

“Seven” includes an interior hidden by stone

The crucial phrase is not simply “seven levels.” It is “the inside of the stone base was used as the first level, a storehouse.” A reader looking only at an exterior image could miss that first unit of the count.

The next paragraph confirms the sequence by beginning with the second level “above the stone base.” Later paragraphs proceed through the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and upper seventh. The count is therefore textual and ordered. It does not begin with the first floor visible above the masonry.

This distinction is useful whenever reconstructions label the building by visible storeys, internal floors, or numbered “levels.” Those systems need not produce the same number. The Shinchō Kōki tells us its own rule: an interior storehouse within the stone base is number one.

A storehouse belongs to the architecture

The word “storehouse” can make the first level sound secondary, as if it were merely an accessory below the important rooms. The chronicle does not exclude it. It gives the space a function and counts it.

That choice matters because the section is intensely interested in use. On higher levels it names reception rooms, preparation spaces, closets, verandas, painted chambers, columns, metal fittings, and craftsmen. The building is not described only as a silhouette. Interiors and functions organize the account.

The first level fits that method. Its contribution is not a painted theme but storage. The reader enters the description through a working interior, then moves upward into increasingly elaborate rooms.

What “twelve ken” does and does not settle

The line gives the stone base a height of more than twelve ken. It is tempting to translate that immediately into metres and compare the result with surviving remains. This article does not do so.

A numerical conversion would appear precise while leaving the hardest questions untouched. What exact feature did the copyist understand by ishikura? Which convention for the unit belongs in the comparison? How does the transmitted wording relate to excavated masonry and to other witnesses? The three lines cannot answer all of that.

The responsible conclusion is narrower. The received text supplies a measurement, associates it with the stone base, and places a storehouse level inside. The number is part of the source, but the physical reconstruction requires more evidence than the source alone.

The second level changes the scale

Immediately after the excerpt, the chronicle describes the second level above the stone base. It gives north–south and east–west dimensions, height, and a count of columns. It then moves through rooms distinguished by size, placement, and painted subject.

This transition explains why the three opening lines are so compact. They establish the rule of ascent. Once the first level has been located within the base, every following “second,” “third,” and later level has a point of reference.

The sequence also allows the reader to separate two kinds of information. The excerpt defines the count. The later inventory fills the levels with architectural and decorative detail. Mixing those tasks too early can produce a vivid reconstruction without a stable numbering system.

Gold belongs to the upper description, not the opening claim

Popular summaries often lead with a “golden castle.” The chronicle does mention gold repeatedly. Painted areas on the second level are described as gold; the interior columns of the sixth level are gold; the upper seventh is gold inside and out.

None of that appears in the three quoted lines. Their work is more basic. They announce the ordered description, give the stone-base measurement, and identify the first level. Keeping the quotation bounded makes it clear which claims come from the opening and which come from later parts of the same section.

It also avoids turning “gold” into a blanket description of every surface. The section distinguishes levels, rooms, paintings, colors, and materials. Its abundance is itemized rather than uniform.

A numbered itinerary, not a single façade

The section reads like movement through an interior. The second level is introduced with dimensions and columns, then divided into rooms. The third receives another set of rooms and images. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh follow with different forms and decoration. Numbering is the thread that lets the reader keep a place in a dense catalogue.

That makes the first level more than a technical correction to a modern floor count. It is the entrance to the narrative. The chronicle begins in the storehouse inside the base because its itinerary needs a first station. Every later “next” depends on that starting point.

An exterior elevation would organize the building differently. It might emphasize roofs, wall lines, and visible masses. The chronicle’s account repeatedly turns inward: tatami counts, room names, paintings, storage, food-preparation areas, verandas, columns, and fittings. Its seven levels are therefore best approached as units in a written tour, not simply bands on a façade.

This does not mean the exterior is absent. The sixth level is said to be octagonal, its outer columns red and inner columns gold. The upper seventh is described inside and outside. Yet even those statements arrive at their numbered place in the ascent. Form and surface are attached to levels already established by the opening count.

The opening defines a boundary

The first and second levels meet at the stone base. One is within it; the next is above it. That paired wording gives the count a physical boundary without providing a complete architectural section.

The boundary also explains why “seven” cannot be read safely as seven identical visible storeys. The first occupies a different relation to the masonry from the second. Later levels differ again. The number joins unlike spaces into one ordered total.

For historical reading, that is enough. We can state how the witness numbers its interior without claiming to have solved the building’s reconstruction. The source is most reliable when allowed to answer the question it actually addresses: where does its own list begin?

What the three lines do not prove

They do not provide a surviving plan. No complete arrangement of walls, stairs, doors, or structural connections can be drawn from these sentences.

They do not resolve every discrepancy among copies, later architectural debates, excavated remains, or modern reconstructions. This article follows the specified 1881 witness and identifies its numbering rule.

They do not establish the date on which every level was finished. Scroll Nine’s earlier opening records construction beginning, Nobunaga moving to Azuchi, and later stonework and tenshu work. Section 6 changes from chronology to description; it is not a day-by-day building log.

Nor do the lines justify treating the tenshu as the whole of Azuchi Castle. They introduce one structure within a larger site whose residences, routes, lake approaches, craftsmen, and construction organization appear elsewhere in the chronicle.

Count from the inside out

The best way to read the opening is to follow its movement. It names the tenshu, descends to the stone base, enters the base, assigns that interior a storehouse function, and calls it the first level. Only then does the chronicle climb.

That route is different from beginning with a modern exterior reconstruction and asking the text to confirm it. The text has its own starting point. Its seven-level count begins inside stone.

The distinction is small enough to fit in thirty-nine characters, yet it governs the long inventory that follows. Every numbered room above rests on a first level that an exterior viewer might never see.

Source

Shinchō Kōki (信長公記), Scroll Nine, section 6, “The Completion of the Construction at Azuchi” (安土御普請首尾仕之事), opening of “The Arrangement of the Azuchi Tenshu” (安土山御天主之次第). The wording was checked against Hoki-yama Kageo’s 1881 middle volume, National Diet Library image 15. The section proceeds level by level through the second to the upper seventh, then names metalworkers, carpenters, lacquerers, tile workers, and the construction magistrate.