Karasawayama Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

On the ridge that juts out toward the Kantō Plain north of Sano, Karasawayama owes its reputation to something unexpected in a region of earthen fortresses: tall stone walls surround the summit. The Agency for Cultural Affairs counts them among the rare Shokuhō-period ishigaki surviving in the Kantō and reads in them the shift from a medieval mountain castle to a stronghold designed according to the methods of Toyotomi's generals. Tradition credits the founding to Fujiwara no Hidesato around 927, but the city of Sano regards this origin as uncertain; as the most widely held hypothesis, for want of abundant evidence, it places the true start of construction in the 15th century under Sano Moritsuna. The castle was certainly in service in the second half of that century. Its most famous chapter remains Sano Masatsuna's resistance, in the 1560s and 1570s, to Uesugi Kenshin's repeated campaigns and to Hōjō offensives. Around 1592, the entry into the family of Tomita Nobutane, who became Sano Nobuyoshi, brought a major overhaul. The castle was abandoned during the Keichō era in favor of a new residence on the plain. Today Karasawayama Shrine, founded in 1883 and dedicated to Hidesato, occupies the main enclosure; at the foot of the mountain, a group of lordly and retainers' residences with moats and earthworks completes a site protected since 2014.