Kikuchi Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Kikuchi site is nothing like a castle in the medieval sense. It is a stronghold from ancient Japan, classed among the mountain fortresses of the Korean type, set on a height of about 160 metres in the middle valley of the Kikuchi River, some 27 kilometres from the Ariake Sea. It now extends across the municipalities of Yamaga (former town of Kikuka) and Kikuchi. The Agency for Cultural Affairs attributes to it about 64 hectares, enclosed over nearly 3.5 kilometres by an earthen rampart backed by cliffs. Its raison d'être lies in the strategic situation of the 7th century: after the naval disaster at Hakusonkō in 663, the Yamato court multiplied its defences around Dazaifu, and the Agency links Kikuchi to this system. Excavations begun in 1967 have yielded post-built and stone-based buildings, three gates with stone thresholds (Fukasako, Horikiri, Ikenoo), a reservoir and, above all, two octagonal structures, an arrangement that the 1994 plan presents as unique among the mountain fortresses of the country. The finds include an eight-petalled lotus roof tile in the Baekje tradition, a wooden tablet recording a rice tribute, charred rice and, discovered in 2008 in the reservoir, a small bronze bodhisattva figurine 12.7 cm high including its tenon. No text dates the construction, which therefore remains fixed by deduction; the site enters written history only in 698 and leaves it in 879.