Shiroishi Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

The name Shiroishi appears in 1545 in a chronicle of the Date house, which associates it with a lord named 白石大和宗綱. Nothing, however, makes it possible to date its founding. The turning point came with Hideyoshi's reorganisation of northern Japan: the Date lost the stronghold, which was entrusted to Gamō Satoshige, a vassal of the Gamō, to whom a modern stone-built fortification is credited. The city of Shiroishi places the transfer to the Gamō in 1590 and links the modern form to 1591, two dates that can be read together without certainty. The name Masuoka is said to go back to this phase, but this is a tradition. In 1598 the region passed to the Uesugi, then Masamune retook the castle in 1600, shortly before Sekigahara. In 1602 he entrusted it to Katakura Kojūrō, whose family remained for more than 260 years, the site benefiting from an exception to the rule of one castle per province. Rebuilt after a fire in 1823, it hosted the governing body of the alliance of northern domains in 1868, before dismantling began in 1874. Two gates are said to have been moved to nearby temples at that time, according to a specialist website. The three-storey tower and the gates, restored in wood, opened in May 1995 and were listed as municipal cultural properties in 2011.