The oni-gawara (鬼瓦) is a part of traditional japanese tile roofs that is supposed to guard against nasty spirits or demons staying in the house. They are placed on the corner ridges of the houses, and have an astonishing variety of design. This will be a bit of a photo exposé of the oni-gawara that I have found, with a few comments. Unfortunately I don’t know much more about them than what I already wrote, so if anyone knows more than me, please leave a comment with interesting links or some more history.

The first picture comes from Himeji-jo, a little bit west of Kobe. This famous castle uses several different oni-gawara. On this small picture you can see them as little protuding things at all the edges. Unfortunately, the castle is very big, and the camera I was using at the time (one of the first Casio Exilims, bought by my friend Johan because it was sooo thin and cool) didn’t have any zoom, so it was difficult to get closeups. The next picture is the closest I got. It was taken from inside the highest chamber in the castle, and as almost all pics with this camera, it is overexposed.

Click on the pictures for bigger, more detailed versions.

Here is another far-away picture, just to give an idea about different designs. Notice the double oni-gawara on the same ridge. This picture is from Arashiyama Ooji (嵐山王寺), close to Kyoto.

But, the use of oni-gawara is not limited to castles and temples. Also your very normal, traditional japanese house has it. Anyone who has been to a countryside town, or a slightly richer area of the city is sure to have seen them. The following load of pictures come from mine and Adris recent oyster-diving trip to Wada (和田) on the Japan Sea (日本海) coast. They are from run-of the-mill houses, and, since I now have my new camera, I was able to get close to many more different oni-gawara than before. Some pictures you might have to click on and choose a greater enlargement – I didn’t crop them yet. You can zoom in a lot – most pictures are 7mp. Enjoy!

This is not a real oni-gawara, but rather just an interesting detail. You can see a fuzzy one in the background, though, which is focused on in the next picture.

The last picture is, again, not really an oni-gawara, but rather just one of many interesting design details.
This is probably the cooles oni-gawara so far. Zoom in on the little face – check out the detail and the care that goes into making these.

All pictures are available in bigger sizes, so get yourself over to my Flickr photostream, and check them out.