Kirk here, following up on William’s post about the castle. William mentioned that, with the dark sky as background, the castle keeps in the photo he shared reminded him of Darth Vadar:
I immediately saw the resemblance and was prompted to start playing with my photo editing software. The image you see is the result. That made me wonder if this might be more than a coincidence. I’ve read an article about how Darth Vadar’s helmet was inspired by one worn by Date Masamune of modern-day Sendai:
https://nipponrama.com/date-masamune-samurai-darth-vader/
I’ve never seen any indication that the mouth on the helmet has roots in Japanese castle design but it’s seems plausible to me that designers flipping through images from 15th century Japan might have borrowed part of the design of the helmet from castle architecture.