Nihonmatsu Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

The castle covers Shirahatagamine hill, at an altitude of about 345 m, on the edge of the Adatara massif. Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs places its origin in 1414 with the installation of Hatakeyama Mitsuyasu, treating this date as a received origin; other accounts remain vaguer or mention an earlier residence. In 1586, when the Hatakeyama were defeated by Date Masamune, the stronghold is said to have been burned. It then passed under lords within the Aizu sphere, first Gamō and later Katō, and the site changed in character: excavations carried out since 1998 show that the shift from a medieval castle to a modern stronghold took place largely between 1627 and 1643, under the Katō. Niwa Mitsushige arrived in 1643; his family held Nihonmatsu until the end of the Edo period, reworked its walls and moats, and organised a town separating samurai quarters from those of temples or merchants. The Ōtemon gate was built in 1832. During the Boshin War, in 1868, the castle fell to the forces of the new government and its buildings burned. Designated a National Historic Site on 26 July 2007 and extended on 11 October 2024, it illustrates the rare superimposition, on a single site, of a medieval fortress and a modern stronghold.