Shimizuyama Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Nagasaki

Perched on Mount Shimizu, an isolated 206-metre hill overlooking the port town of Izuhara to the west, on the island of Tsushima, Shimizuyama Castle is one of the rare direct witnesses to the military logistics of the Japanese invasions of Korea. When Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched the Bunroku and Keichō campaigns from his headquarters at Nagoya in Hizen Province, he had fortified relay bases established on the islands of Iki and Tsushima to secure the sea route to the peninsula. Tradition attributes its construction to Mōri Takamasa, around 1591. The site reads as a succession of three enclosures stepped from east to west along the ridge: the third enclosure, the second enclosure and then the main enclosure, each defended by a masugata-type gate and lined with dry-stone walls. The almost circular plan of the main enclosure is unusual for a fortification of this period. Sections of the walls remain visible from the town, and a footpath leads to the ruins in about twenty minutes from Izuhara port. The site has been protected as a National Historic Site since 1984.