Hagi Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Yamaguchi

Set against Mount Shizuki (Shigetsu-yama), a 143-metre wooded hill that drops straight into the Sea of Japan, Hagi Castle was for more than two and a half centuries the seat of power of the Mōri clan and the Chōshū domain. Mōri Terumoto, forced after the Battle of Sekigahara to give up Hiroshima for this remote coastline, began building it in 1604; the complex was completed in 1608. The site combined a lowland enclosure, protected by three lines of moats and dominated by a five-level white-plastered keep, with a fortified redoubt on the hilltop serving as a last refuge in case of siege, the sea forming a natural moat at the rear. Dismantled in 1874 on the orders of the Meiji government, the castle today retains only its massive stone walls, its water-filled moats and a few reconstructed gates and walls. The site, now Shizuki Park, is a National Historic Site and since 2015 has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage property among the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, together with the castle town of Hagi. It is one of Japan's 100 Fine Castles.