En un regard
Le château en bref
Kubota Castle was born of an enforced move: in 1602 the Satake clan left Hitachi Province for Akita, and its head, Satake Yoshinobu, gave up the old Minato Castle in favour of Mount Shinmei, a modest rise of about forty metres. Work began in May 1603, the lord moved in in August 1604, and the city of Akita places the end of construction around 1631. The castle belongs to the category built on a low eminence in a plain. Its hallmark is restraint: no keep was ever raised here and stone walls are almost entirely absent, defence relying instead on moats, earthen ramparts and several enclosures. The municipality explains this by financial constraints, the weight of military obligations owed to the shogunate and a concern not to provoke the Tokugawa; these motives are a matter of interpretation. Guides record eight two-storey corner turrets. Most of the buildings were lost in a fire in 1880, after the end of the feudal regime, and the grounds became Senshū Park, whose design is attributed to the landscape architect Nagaoka Yasuhei. Only one administrative building from the feudal period survives, the officers' guardhouse, dated between 1758 and 1778. The corner turret visible today dates from 1989; the main gate of the central enclosure is a reconstruction based on old plans, texts and excavations.
