Tsuruoka Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Before becoming the seat of the Shōnai domain, this flatland castle was called Daihōji-jō. The Mutō family, locally dominant, occupied it: the city attributes its construction to Mutō Nagamori at the start of the Muromachi period, whereas a specialist source speaks of the 13th century, and the discrepancy remains unresolved. Around 1533, after a fire, the Mutō moved to Ōura and the site became secondary. After their fall in 1587, the region passed to the Uesugi and then to the Mogami, who made it a strongpoint in 1601; the name Tsurugaoka appeared in 1603. The real rise came in 1622: Sakai Tadakatsu, arriving from Matsushiro, established his seat here, with Kamegasaki at Sakata as a secondary stronghold. The Chidō Museum describes a still rudimentary castle, which the Sakai gradually provided with stone walls and a main gate in the Ninomaru. The Sakai held on there for about 250 years. Defeated in 1868 during the Boshin War, the domain handed the castle over to the new government. The buildings were pulled down in the mid-1870s (1875 or 1876 according to local pages), the ramparts levelled and the site converted into a park. The Shōnai shrine has occupied the former Honmaru since 1877.