Sekiyado Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

At the point where the Tone and the Edo rivers part, Sekiyado is a rare example of a castle for which the river was both shield and enemy. Water on three sides makes it, according to the city of Noda, a stronghold without equal in the prefecture; control of this junction commanded river traffic across the Kantō, and the specialist site japancastle.jp reports that the Hōjō likened taking it to capturing an entire country. Yanada Narisuke, vassal of the Koga kubō Ashikaga Shigeuji, founded it in 1457 according to the prefectural museum. Three Hōjō offensives failed or struggled before the surrender of Yanada Harusuke in 1574, an episode woven through with shifting alliances with Uesugi Kenshin. Then came the Tokugawa order: Matsudaira Yasumoto, half-brother of Ieyasu, entered in 1590, and the domain changed hands twenty-three times among eight families, of whom the Kuze stayed longest. In 1671 Kuze Hiroyuki had a tower raised after the Fujimi of Edo. The river then took over: repeated floods, dismantling in the Meiji era and, later, the embankment fill that swallowed a large part of the site. Visitors must therefore distinguish two places: the tower-shaped prefectural museum, opened in 1995 on the super-levee and devoted to the river and its trades; and, about 500 metres to the south, a stele marking the honmaru. One built witness survives: the Uzumemon gate, sold to a private owner after the castle was abandoned and later moved to the Noda historical park.