Hachinohe Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Hachinohe Castle stood in today's Uchimaru district, at the northern end of a terrace on the right bank of the Mabechi, near the mouths of the Mabechi and Niida rivers. It comprised two main enclosures surrounded by moats: the Honmaru, part of which now forms Sanpachijō Park and hosts the shrine of the same name, and the Ninomaru, now occupied by the city hall and its surroundings. A travel account of 1660 describes a large stronghold with deep moats. Urban growth has erased most of the complex, of which only parts of the earthworks and moats survive. Excavations begun in 1994 during work on the park have nevertheless identified two phases of the lord's palace, first on earth-set posts and then on stone foundations. The origins of the site remain poorly known: the hypothesis of an earlier settlement called Nakadate rests on no reliable document. Construction is attributed to Nanbu Toshinao around 1627, after the Ne Nanbu left for Tōno, and mid-seventeenth-century references confirm its existence. In 1664 the division of the Morioka domain assigned 20,000 koku to Nanbu Naofusa, who settled here; his descendants remained until the abolition of the domains in 1871. Surviving witnesses include the Sumi-goten gate, built in 1797 and designated by the prefecture. Another gate, the east gate, was re-erected at the entrance to the Ne site, a physical link between the two strongholds.