Watari Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Miyagi

In Watari, south of Sendai, Watari Castle was for nearly three centuries the seat of successive branches of the Date family. Built in the Sengoku period by Date Motomune, a son of Date Tanemune adopted into the Watari clan, who moved the clan's seat here from nearby Kozutsumi Castle, it owes its nickname Gagyū-jō, 'castle of the reclining ox', to the outline of the terrain on which it stands. After the Watari left for Wakuya in 1591 and a spell under Katakura Kagetsuna, it passed in 1602 to Date Shigezane, who turned it into a modern fortress and laid out the castle town. Downgraded to a 'yōsai' after the one-castle-per-province edict, it remained in the hands of the Watari-Date until the end of the Edo period. In 1868 the surrender of the Sendai Domain, defeated in the Boshin War, was concluded here. Two years later the family left to settle Hokkaidō and the buildings were sold. Today the Watari-jinja shrine, founded in 1879 and dedicated to Shigezane, occupies the former main enclosure, at the heart of a park where traces of the inner moat survive.