Tsukidate Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Miyagi

In the town of Ōsato, north-east of Sendai, Tsukidate Castle crowns a modest hill some fifteen metres high overlooking the rice plain. Also known as Ashi-ga-jō, it is linked by tradition to the Oka clan, a small local family said to have developed these lands and whose seat is sometimes identified with Okayama Castle. From the Kamakura period to the end of the Muromachi period, the region was contested by several powerful houses, the Sugawara, Kira, Ōsaki, Rusu and Kasai, under whose authority the Oka placed themselves in turn. Caught between the great neighbouring clans, the Kurokawa, Kasai and Rusu, they disappeared at the end of the Muromachi period, and the castle with them. No buildings survive, but the western slope retains a series of about a dozen stepped terraces (kuruwa), which today shape Tsukidate Park. From the top, the view takes in the rice fields to the north and Mount Funagata and Mount Izumigatake.