Yagi Castle (Tajima)

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Hyōgo

Yagi Castle overlooks the former post station of Yagi, in the Yagi River valley in Yabu, in the heart of the old province of Tajima. For several centuries it was the fief of the Yagi clan, a branch descended from the Asakura and the Kusakabe line, which rose to become one of the "four kings" among the vassals of the powerful Yamana clan. The site combines a Kamakura-period lord's residence at the foot of the hill, excavated in 1989, a medieval earthen castle on the summit and a stone castle from the late sixteenth century. After Hashiba Hideyoshi's conquest of Tajima in 1580, Bessho Shigemune received the 15,000-koku domain and equipped Shiroyama hill (about 303 m) with a masonry castle: its main enclosure is still surrounded on three sides by rough-stone walls up to 9.5 m high, among the oldest in the region. About 450 m to the northwest, the Tsuchi-jō (409 m) preserves some fifteen terraces, earthen embankments and a transverse moat. The castle was left abandoned when the Bessho departed at the end of the sixteenth century; it has been a National Historic Site since 1997.