Karatsu Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Karatsu Castle occupies a low 42-meter hill, 満島山, jutting into Karatsu Bay, while its second and third enclosures extended over the dune belt to the southwest. The pine groves on either side of the hill account for its nickname, Maizuru-jō, the castle of the dancing crane. Tradition credits its construction, between 1602 and 1608, to Terazawa Hirotaka, and adds that materials were reused from Nagoya Castle, another major building site nearby; since the archives of this line, which died out in 1647, have been lost, the precise circumstances of the work remain unknown. The present silhouette should not mislead: none of the thirty or so recorded old plans shows a keep, and nothing proves that such a building existed before Meiji, even though a base survives. The current tower is a concrete structure of 1966, built for cultural and tourism purposes, presenting the history of the domain, arms and Karatsu ceramics. Since 2008, the restoration of the stone walls has been changing how the site is understood: foundations of towers and gates match the Edo plans, and older walls buried beneath the keep, accompanied by gilded roof tiles, suggest a possible installation linked to Toyotomi power before 1602, a hypothesis yet to be confirmed.