Kōriyama Castle (Fukushima)

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Fukushima

Now absorbed into the urban fabric around Kōriyama Station, Kōriyama Castle, also known as Inari-tate, was in the Sengoku period the residence of the Kōriyama clan, a lineage descended from the Itō and vassal to the Tamura of Miharu. Its founding date remains unknown. The site entered history in 1588: a coalition of the Ashina and the Satake besieged it, and Date Masamune, whom the Kōriyama had joined after the death of Tamura Kiyoaki, came to their aid, setting off the so-called Kōriyama Campaign, some forty days of skirmishes that ended in a negotiated peace in July. In the early Edo period the site hosted an administrative post of the Nihonmatsu Domain, around which the Kōriyama post town developed. For a long time scholars hesitated between two locations, near the station or on the Nishinouchi plateau. Municipal excavations in 2022 settled the question in favour of the knoll next to the station, uncovering a wide ditch separating the main enclosure from the secondary one. No remains are currently laid out for visitors.