Silicon nitride ceramics with highly oriented microstructure were prepared by tape casting a slurry containing 5 wt% of the silicon nitride whiskers. The whiskers were aligned in the casting direction and worked as seeds for the grain growth. The anisotropy was observed from the sintering shrinkage, Vickers indentation crack lengths, and XRD patterns. The cracks were much longer on the surface normal to the aligned grains than on the tape casting surface where the lateral cracks were also observed. The effect of sintering additives and the annealing treatment on the indentation crack length was examined. The sample with higher silica content had longer cracks than the one with lower silica content. The crack length anisotropy increased after annealing at 2123K.