Sugaya Castle (Sugaya-yakata)

En un regard

Le château en bref

The name Sugaya immediately calls to mind Hatakeyama Shigetada, a vassal of the Kamakura shogunate whose memory remains attached to this terrace near the confluence of the Toki and Tsuki rivers. The national notice recalls that, after living on the Hatakeyama estate in Ōsato district, he is said to have established his residence at Sugaya, along a strategic road leading to Kamakura. Yet this account lacks the solidity of what can be seen on the ground: the authorities themselves recognize, in the layout of the enclosures and the construction of the earthen ramparts, features of a later plain castle, while considering that the central part preserves the memory of a single-enclosure residence. Other authors go further and attribute the visible structures solely to the Sengoku period, no remains from Shigetada's time having been confirmed. The site's interest thus lies in this gap between tradition and archaeology. It was indeed a contested post during the late fifteenth-century conflicts between the two Uesugi branches, with a clash in 1488 at Sugayahara according to the available summaries. Designated a national historic site in 1973 and incorporated in 2008 into the Hiki castle group with Matsuyama, Sugiyama and Ogura, it houses the prefectural Ranzan Historic Sites Museum, which studies the region's medieval castles and holds, among other things, itabi stone stelae, abundant in Saitama.