Utsunomiya Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

According to the city, Utsunomiya Castle never had a keep, and its defenses relied on earth: high ramparts and several lines of moats, across a complex nearly a kilometer on each side. The city dates its origin to the late Heian period, naming as its builder either Fujiwara no Hidesato or Fujiwara no Sōen, ancestor of the Utsunomiya; the question remains open. For nearly five centuries this family held the region, and the city links Yoritsuna, its fifth head, to the origins of the Hundred Poems. The break came in 1597, when Utsunomiya Kunitsuna was stripped of his lands. Yet the name most closely tied to the site is that of Honda Masazumi, who arrived in 1619 and reorganized both castle and town, whose layout still shapes today's city center. His fall in 1622 fed the tale of a booby-trapped ceiling meant to crush the shogun, a fable the municipal bulletin presents as contrary to the facts and which thrived on the stage. A stopover for shoguns on their way to Nikkō, the castle was devastated in 1868 by two assaults during the Boshin War. It then vanished almost entirely from the urban landscape as its moats were filled in. What can be seen in the park opened on March 25, 2007, is therefore a partial re-creation of the honmaru: ramparts, a moat, earthen walls and two wooden towers.