Hakusan Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Yamanashi

Hakusan Castle, also called Nabeyama Castle, crowns a height of about 570 metres in the Kamiyama district of Nirasaki, where the narrow Kamanashi valley opens onto the Kōfu basin, not far from its confluence with the Shiokawa. Its name comes from the Hakusan Shrine standing on the same mountain. The tradition recorded in the Kai Kokushi attributes it to Takeda Nobuyoshi, regarded as the founder of the Takeda clan at the end of the Heian period, although no medieval document confirms this directly. In the Sengoku period the Aoki and Yamadera families, vassals of the Takeda, held it; the stronghold was probably remodelled during the Tenshō-Jingo conflict of 1582 to watch the road to Suwa. An earthwork mountain castle without a keep, it retains a square summit enclosure about 25 metres across surrounded by ramparts, bent entrances, trenches and a series of vertical moats on its eastern slope, complemented by two signal posts on the neighbouring ridges. Threatened by quarrying projects in 1983 and 1996, the site was saved by local campaigning; designated a National Historic Site in 2001, it today offers remarkably well-preserved medieval earthworks.