Makabe Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

On a terrace at the western foot of Mount Ashio, on the edge of the Tsukuba range, Makabe Castle belonged to a local clan that tradition places here from the end of the 12th century and which left in 1602. Its distinction lies less in its military role than in what excavations carried out since 1997 in the enclosure known as the Nakajō have revealed: a garden of at least 8,000 m², the largest castle garden known in the prefecture. Around shallow ponds adorned with white and black stones stood large ceremonial buildings, a stage and small pavilions identified as teahouses because of the abundance of tea utensils. More than a hundred thousand ceramic fragments, mostly banquet dishes but also Jingdezhen porcelain and Longquan celadon, along with go stones and sugoroku pieces, describe the entertaining of a 16th-century lord. Archaeologists distinguish three phases of development there, associated with Makabe Hisamoto, Ujimoto and Fusamoto. The overall plan, four enclosures of moats with sharp angles allowing flanking fire, remains legible across the roughly 12.5 protected hectares. No building survives on site; two gates attributed to the former castle were re-erected in neighbouring localities, and the old castle town now forms the historic district of Makabe, protected as a group of traditional buildings.