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Names & Creature Profile

Shachi and shachihoko name a formidable fish-bodied creature made familiar by roof ornaments. The government’s interview with historical-materials scholar Ryu Murakami describes a dragon or tiger head joined to a fish body. Kinshachi identifies the golden form. At Nagoya, the imaginary creature has a remarkably material biography: its body can be removed, repaired, shipped, displayed and rebuilt. [5]

The castle’s pair occupy opposite ends of the main roof ridge: male to the north and female to the south. Each stands roughly two and a half metres high. The apparently little fish above a distant roof is a substantial object. [9]

Homeland & Tradition

Ieyasu ordered construction at Nagoya in 1610; the keep was completed in 1612 and the Hommaru Palace in 1615. The golden ornaments stood within a military complex expressing Tokugawa power. Relocation of people from nearby Kiyosu helped form its castle town, tying the stronghold to Nagoya’s development. [9]

Murakami sets such display within a broader history of rulers using gold to proclaim authority. Nobunaga’s Azuchi Castle used gold-leaf tiles, while Hideyoshi had a gilded tea room. Nagoya’s guardians belong to that world of precious materials made visible on architecture. A bright surface could announce wealth and command even to someone standing far below. [5]

Historical Record

The original pair were removed in 1871, leaving their roof for the new national government’s custody. Asahi traces a succession of places and owners rather than an uninterrupted watch over the castle. The northern ornament entered museum display in Tokyo; the southern one travelled to Vienna. Local efforts eventually brought both back, with the restored roof mounting completed in February 1879. [1]

Nishikawa explains why the Vienna exposition mattered to the Meiji government: participation could encourage exports, acquisition of technical knowledge and museum development. The roof ornament became one of Japan’s spectacular large exhibits. Alongside a model of the Kamakura Buddha and oversized lantern and drum, it made scale itself part of the presentation. A castle emblem now helped introduce Japanese craftsmanship to an international audience. [3]

Appearance & Signs

The reconstructed shachi’s official photograph shows a broad head, round eye, layered scales and projecting fins. Its body curls into a spreading tail. Golden ridges catch the light against green roof metal: the rising silhouette gives a motionless ornament the compressed energy of a creature turning. [9]

The historic body was built in layers. The digital museum describes a wooden core wrapped in lead, copper and gold-bearing plates. That construction gave the shape its support and the outside its brilliance. Sakai’s surviving fragments retain folds, holes and fastening marks: the skin was an assembled surface, capable of repair piece by piece. [8][2]

Nature & Powers

Water imagery gives roof guardians a protective meaning. The Japan Tourism Agency’s description of Tokoji’s gate distinguishes its makara ornaments from the more usual tiger-headed, carp-bodied shachihoko, then links the water-related decoration with protection from fire. This is an architectural belief expressed in a vulnerable wooden building’s ornamentation; the creature’s place above the building carries the wish for safety. [10]

Nagoya’s golden skin also carries the properties of its material. Murakami describes gold as resistant to oxidation, workable under the hammer and capable of being alloyed. Its lasting brilliance helped make it attractive as an emblem of enduring power. Yet a roof exposes the assembled object to weather and damage: the permanence suggested by gold still depended on care for the structure beneath. [5][8]

Tales & Encounters

Brownell’s 1904 travel book gives the shining scales a different power: they tempt a man into an impossible proof of love. His chapter begins with a drinking cup and a conversation, then unfolds the tale of Daredesuka, a wandering master of fencing who has lost his lord. Success at contests in Kyoto brings invitations to banquets, where he sees Eikibo San perform her celebrated fan dance. The disciplined fighter becomes unable to think of anyone else. [4]

A prosperous lord offers him a post teaching retainers, rice income and a household. He refuses because the journey would take him away from Eikibo. When he offers marriage, she treats his promises as familiar and unreliable. He insists she should demand a test. Pearls from the sea or a golden scale from Nagoya Castle: he will bring whatever convinces her. She chooses the scale, a treasure perched where only birds normally reach. She will dance in Nagoya the following month. [4]

Daredesuka has another skill besides fencing. He can guide great kites, and once used one to carry a rescue line to a vessel blown out to sea. He secretly builds a kite large enough to lift him, then persuades another masterless warrior to help in exchange for gold and future assistance. On a stormy night he rises toward the roof and pries away a scale. For a moment, his extraordinary plan succeeds. [4]

The wet tool slips from his hand. Its fall alerts the guards; a break in the clouds lets moonlight expose the kite. They capture him on his descent, and the stolen scale supplies the evidence against both men. The two receive a death sentence. Eikibo never performs the promised festival dance: on its morning, a priest finds her body on Daredesuka’s grave. Brownell leaves the ending in that stark image, with no triumphant return or reward for the daring ascent. [4]

Landscape & Associations

The historical southern ornament’s return from Vienna held a different kind of suspense. The Nile, carrying Japanese exhibition cargo home, sank in a storm in March 1874. The National Diet Library explains that the enormous shachi had proved too large for that ship at the Hong Kong transfer, so it travelled on another vessel. The size that made it awkward cargo also kept it clear of the wreck. [7]

Many other exhibition objects disappeared beneath the sea; some were recovered later. The library’s account keeps the shachi’s escape separate from those losses. It returned as an intact travelling exhibit, while the cargo disaster belonged to another part of the same undertaking. Between the roof and the exhibition hall lay ports, ships and decisions about loading: the guardian’s survival depended on a practical obstacle in its journey. [7]

Variants & Kindred Beings

Makara and shachihoko can occupy comparable places on a roof without becoming one creature. Tokoji’s gate provides a precise example: its Indian-origin makara imagery appears within a building combining Chinese and Japanese architectural features. The agency identifies those terminal decorations separately from the Japanese shachihoko. The comparison concerns their protective architectural use, while preserving different names and histories. [10]

Brownell, meanwhile, calls Nagoya’s ornaments dolphins and gold fishes. Those English labels belong to his printed retelling’s vocabulary. They do not turn the roof device into a zoological dolphin, nor identify Daredesuka with every thief mentioned elsewhere. The peculiar combination of fan dancer, rejected employment and kite rescue belongs to the version told in this chapter, giving its golden scale a particular human cost. [4]

Meaning & Belief

A large precious ornament can stand for a government, an art tradition or a city, depending on who encounters it. Nishikawa’s exposition history follows an official effort to make Japan’s productions visible abroad. In that setting, the castle fish shared attention with other outsized objects. The audience encountered something brought down from an inaccessible ridge and placed close enough to examine. Its setting changed what the display could communicate. [3]

In Brownell’s story, one detached scale contracts that public magnificence into a private demand. Daredesuka offers something extraordinary because ordinary promises fail him. But the object that should demonstrate devotion instead convicts him. The tale turns the roof’s height into a measure of daring, then makes the stolen gold bear witness against its possessor. The same brilliance that drew his ambition leaves him unable to escape the consequences. [4]

Later Retellings & Reception

The pair’s appearance after war required reconstruction. The digital museum describes the surviving 1827 repair plans, then the detailed survey drawings and glass-plate photographs produced before the castle burned. Those records helped recreate the forms in 1959. A repair plan and a carefully taken photograph thus became resources for putting a familiar silhouette back over the city. [8]

The wartime fate was less uniform than a simple statement that both ornaments burned away. Asahi reports that lowering work had begun in April 1945. When the May 14 air raid destroyed the keep, the north shachi remained overhead, while the south was already on the ground and escaped complete destruction. Some damaged southern scales survived collection and storage, retaining material from the original pair. [1]

Evidence & Open Questions

Sakai’s 2025 study brings the surviving skin into close focus. Three-dimensional measurements recorded shapes and thicknesses without squeezing fragile sheets between measuring tools. The comparison of colour also required care: surface condition and brightness could alter an impression that might otherwise be mistaken for gold purity. Folds and fastenings supplied another kind of evidence, showing how a scale had been fitted and fixed within an assembled body. These are small traces of decisions made by craftspeople working on a very large object. [2]

The 2026 joint investigation looked beneath the surface without destroying the scales. Its announcement reports a gold-rich near-surface region in five of seven examined pieces, and proposes that a historic surface treatment may explain the enrichment. It does not identify a particular craftsman or establish one treatment method. The visible gold and the metal deeper inside can therefore tell different parts of the same object’s history. [6]

Recent research also revisits a familiar explanation for repeated repairs: that rulers stripped value from the shachi to relieve financial difficulty. Nagoya’s 2026 announcement says the received financial-rescue explanation lacks a basis and instead links the changes to preservation. This shifts the emphasis from plundering the golden creature to maintaining it. The restored pair still gleam above the roof; the old fragments reveal how much work a lasting emblem can require. [11]

Sources & Manuscript Notes

Asahi follows the ornaments through repairs and transfers; Sakai examines surviving metal fragments. Nishikawa supplies the Vienna context, and the National Diet Library traces the cargo journey. Brownell’s complete chapter preserves one literary theft tale. Official guides identify the reconstructed pair, while the 2026 joint research announcement explains what measurements reveal beneath an old scale’s surface. [1][2][3][7][4][9][6]

名古屋城天守金鯱過去と今 [Nagoya Castle’s keep-top kinshachi: past and present] ↗
Misako Asahi (朝日美砂子) · Nagoya Castle Research Center Bulletin 6, 2025, pp. 11–38
Printed pp. 11–13 and 15–21; actual PDF pp. 1–3 and 5–11
Complete selected substantive sections read in Japanese: surviving fragments, Edo repairs, transfer, exhibitions, return, thefts and photographs. Later sections, tables and plates outside this selection are not represented as fully consulted.
Checked 2026-10-11
名古屋城金鯱関連資料の基礎的調査 [A fundamental study of kinshachi-related artifacts in Nagoya Castle] ↗
Masashi Sakai (酒井将史) · Nagoya Castle Research Center Bulletin 6, 2025, printed pp. 173–178

The artist’s reading of the legend

Illuminated folios

These artworks interpret the stories and landscapes explored here. They are imaginative illustrations, rather than historical records or evidence of an encounter.

A made golden shachihoko with a broad formidable head, layered fish scales and upright flared tail stands on a green castle roof ridge beneath a twilight sky, within a dark jade and silver frame. — Original interpretive shachihoko roof ornament informed by the reconstructed Nagoya kinshachi’s public form; the ornament design, architecture, landscape and celestial frame are artistic choices.

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