Kannonji Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Mount Kinugasa, rising to 432 metres, is home to one of the largest medieval fortresses in Japan, counted among the ‘five great mountain castles’. The Rokkaku, a branch of the Sasaki and military governors of Ōmi, held position there from the Nanboku-chō period, but at that time it was only an entrenchment. It was in the sixteenth century that the mountain became covered with terraced enclosures around the Kannon-shōji temple, which gives the site its name. Rare before Azuchi, the main terraces are supported by large stone walls, developed between about 1530 and 1550, a sign of considerable resources rather than of a fully mature technique. At the southern foot, Ishidera hosted a free market in 1549, one of the earliest recorded examples of this type. The Rokkaku's rule nevertheless began to crumble: in 1563, the assassination of the Gotō led to the departure of several lords, and in 1568 Rokkaku Yoshikata and his son fled to Kōga before Oda Nobunaga, without giving battle at Kannonji. The date of the fire identified in excavation does not agree with the written sources. The site retains enclosures known as Honmaru, Hirai or Ikeda, whose names remain traditional, and walls uncovered since the prefectural works of 2008–2011.