Shiwa Fort

En un regard

Le château en bref

Founded in 803, a year after Isawa, Shiwa Fort belongs to the campaigns waged against the Emishi under Emperor Kanmu. The Nihon kiryaku records that in the second month of the twenty-second year of the Enryaku era rice and salt were sent from Echigo to the office in charge of the works, and that the following month Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, appointed to build the stronghold, set out. Completion within the year remains a deduction, as no text establishes it. Long unlocated, the site was identified through excavations carried out in 1976-1977 ahead of the construction of the Tōhoku Expressway. Its scale is exceptional: a square enclosure 840 m on each side, an outer ditch 928 m on each side, an administrative centre 150 m on each side and, by the city's estimate, 1,200 to 2,000 pit dwellings along the wall. Yet the stronghold's history is short. Repeated flooding of the Shizukuishi River prompted the transfer of its functions to Tokutan Fort about ten years later, and materials from the dismantled buildings are thought to have travelled by river. Designated a national historic site on 14 September 1984, the site underwent partial reconstruction from 1993 onwards, before the park opened to the public in 1997.