En un regard
Le château en bref
On the tip of a hill rising some forty metres in elevation, Akechi Mitsuhide began work around 1579 on the fortress meant to hold the newly subjugated Tanba, and entrusted its garrison to his son-in-law Hidemitsu. The construction survived his fall in 1582: the successive lords continued it, and its completion, according to the municipal pages, falls between roughly 1600 and 1620. The Kuchiki then held the fief from 1669 to 1871, across thirteen generations.
What survives is above all the stone base. The dismantling at the start of the Meiji period left only the walls around the keep and the guard post at Akagane Gate. Excavations in 1984 revealed three or four enlargements of the base, and the finds support a foundation in the Tenshō era. The site is distinguished by its 502 reused stones recorded, including grave markers, five-element stupas and millstones: 181 in the walls, 321 in the mass of the base. The three-level, four-storey keep, rebuilt in 1986 thanks to a mobilisation of local residents, is inspired by plans from the early Edo period; it is not an ancient structure.
