Sawara Jin'ya

En un regard

Le château en bref

In 1855, the shogunate, concerned by foreign ships off the coast of Ezo, entrusted the defence of the shoreline to several domains, including Nanbu. Nanbu was to protect Hakodate and watch the coast between Cape Esan and Horobetsu. Its headquarters lay near Hakodate, with secondary posts spread along the shore. At Sawara, an annex housed about fifty soldiers in 1856. What remains is an almost square enclosure, about 67 m east–west and 59 m north–south, surrounded by an earthen bank roughly 3 m high. It is not a castle in the classical sense but a plain military camp, without towers or visible stonework, built for coastal surveillance. Together with the sites at Muroran and Oshamambe, it forms a group designated a National Historic Site, a rare witness to the defence of Hokkaidō in the late Edo period.