Fukui Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Fukui

A few minutes' walk from the station, in the heart of the city of Fukui, the stone walls and wide water-filled moats of Fukui Castle now frame the prefectural government building. This flatland castle (hirajiro) was built from 1601 by Yūki Hideyasu, second son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had just received Echizen Province; the work lasted about six years, and tradition credits Ieyasu himself with designing the main enclosures. It succeeded Shibata Katsuie's Kitanoshō Castle, destroyed in 1583, part of whose site it covers. For some 270 years, seventeen generations of the Echizen branch of the Matsudaira ruled one of Japan's most important domains from here. The name Fukui, adopted in 1624, is said to come from the Fuku-no-i well, still visible in the north-west corner of the site. The great five-storey keep, about 37 metres high, burned down in 1669 and was never rebuilt; its stone base survives. Dismantled in the Meiji era and then hit by the bombing of 1945, the site retains its ishigaki walls of stone from Mount Asuwa, while the covered Orōkabashi bridge (2008) and the Yamazato-guchi gate have been restored. The cherry trees reflected in the moats make it a popular place for a stroll in spring.