En un regard
Le château en bref
Kokura Castle stands in the centre of Kitakyūshū. A first work is recorded here in 1569, but its present form goes back to Hosokawa Tadaoki, whose victory at Sekigahara earned him a fief of nearly 400,000 koku and who launched a building campaign of about seven years in 1602. His keep used the arrangement known as karatsukuri: no eaves separate the fourth storey from the fifth, which overhangs the one below. That silhouette is repeated in the 1959 reconstruction. In 1632 the Hosokawa left for Higo and the domain passed to Ogasawara Tadazane, placed there to keep watch on the great outer lords of Kyūshū; his family stayed for about 230 years. The keep burned down in 1837. On 1 August 1866, during the Second Chōshū Expedition, the defenders themselves set fire to the castle and withdrew towards Kawara; Kiku district then passed into Chōshū's custody. A brigade and later the headquarters of the 12th Division subsequently occupied the ground. The 1959 building, in reinforced concrete, is not a scholarly reconstruction; it now houses a museum with a model of the castle town, a mechanical-puppet theatre and a stair lift. What survives from the earlier period is chiefly the walls, built of natural blocks quarried on Mount Ashidachi, along with an outer moat system about 8 km long that linked the town's districts and gates.
