Chigasaki Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Kanagawa

In the heart of the Kōhoku New Town, in Yokohama's Tsuzuki Ward, Chigasaki Castle (茅ヶ崎城) occupies the southern tip of a low terrace overlooking the Hayabuchi River, a wooded hill that locals simply called Joyama. Local tradition attributes its founding to Tada Yukitsuna in the 11th century, but excavations carried out from 1990 to 1998 rather date its construction to the second half of the 15th century, with alterations in the early 16th century. The excavated artefacts suggest links with the Ōgigayatsu Uesugi. In the Sengoku period the area belonged to the Odawara Hōjō: the castle served as a satellite of Kozukue Castle, probably held by the Zama family. It was abandoned with the fall of the Hōjō in 1590. Spared from urban development because it had been set aside as green space, the site preserves, with a clarity rare in a city, its baileys, dry moats, earthen ramparts and the site of a tower platform. In 2008 it became a municipal historical park of nearly 2.5 hectares, dotted with information panels.