Keywords
Architecture
Castles
Also pronounced guri-ishi. Chestnut stones. Small stones (10-30 cm in diameter) that were used as packing or backfill. Larger kuri-ishi were used to fill the cracks and spaces among ordinary stones *hira-ishi 平石 or the face of a castle's stone wall *ishigaki 石垣. Smaller kuri-ishi were used to back-fill the main stones of a castle wall. Layers of chestnut stones might be one meter thick. Chestnut stones used as backfill were also called uragome-ishi 裏込石 (see *uragome 裏込), literally meaning stones to pack behind the main stones, or tsume-ishi 詰石 (packing stones).