is a

Japanese castle are fortresses constructed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries, and came into their best-known form in the 16th century. Castles in Japan were built to guard important or strategic sites, such ...

in the city

Akita is a Japanese name and may refer to: Places * 8182 Akita, a main-belt asteroid * Akita Castle, a Nara period fortified settlement in Akita, Japan * Akita Domain, also known as Kubota Domain, feudal domain in Edo period Japan * Akita, Kumamoto ...

Akita Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Provinces and prefectures" in ; "Tōhoku" in . Its population is approximately 966,000 (as of 1 October 2019) and its ge ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. Throughout the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, Kubota Castle was home to the

Satake clan The was a Japanese samurai clan that claimed descent from the Minamoto clan. Its first power base was in Hitachi Province. The clan was subdued by Minamoto no Yoritomo in the late 12th century, but later entered Yoritomo's service as vassals ...

, ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

'' of

Kubota Domain was a feudal domain in Edo period Japan, located in Dewa Province (modern-day Akita Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Kubota Castle in what is now the city of Akita and was thus also known as the . It was governed for the whole of its his ...

, rulers of northern

Dewa Province was a province of Japan comprising modern-day Yamagata Prefecture and Akita Prefecture, except for the city of Kazuno and the town of Kosaka. Dewa bordered on Mutsu and Echigō Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . History Early peri ...

. The castle was also known as or . In the official documents of the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

, the castle was called , although this name is now more commonly used to refer to the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...

fortified settlement of

Akita Castle refers to the ruins of a Nara period fortified settlement located in what is now the city Akita, Akita, Akita, Akita Prefecture, Japan. It is also sometimes referred to as “Fort Akita”. The name is sometimes used wrongly for Kubota Castle, an ...

which was nearby.

Situation

Kubota Castle is a ''hirayama''-style Japanese castle, built on a hill on the left bank of the Nibetsu River (Asahi River), a tributary of the Omono River, incorporating the river and adjacent wetlands into its defenses. The main bailey was protected by a system of wet moats, earthenworks and eight ''

yagura Yagura may refer to: * Yagura castle * Yagura opening * Yagura (tombs) * Yagura (tower) is the Japanese word for "tower", "turret", "keep", or "scaffold". The word is most often seen in reference to structures in Japanese castle compounds bu ...

'' watchtowers; however, the castle made very little use of stone walls, which were not common in

Hitachi Province was an old provinces of Japan, old province of Japan in the area of Ibaraki Prefecture.Louis Frédéric, Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Hitachi fudoki''" in . It was sometimes called . Hitachi Province bordered on Shimōsa Province, S ...

, the previous homeland of the Satake clan. The castle also never had an imposing main keep, possibly to prevent attracting unwelcome suspicion from the

History

As Kubota Castle

Satake Yoshinobu was a ''daimyō'' in Sengoku period and early Edo period Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate and the 19th head of the Satake clan and 1st ''daimyō'' of Kubota Domain in Dewa Province. His courtesy title was '' Sakonoeshōshō'', later '' Uky ...

, was reassigned to Dewa Province from the clan's ancestral territories by

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow ...

in 1602, and arrived at the site of the

Minato Castle was a Japanese castle in what is now Tsuchizaki Minato, Akita, Akita Prefecture, Japan. Throughout the Muromachi period, Minato Castle was home to the Ando clan, ''daimyō'' of Akita Domain, rulers of northern Dewa Province. History The early ...

Tsuchizaki is a neighbourhood located in Akita City, Akita Prefecture, Japan. , the neighbourhood had an estimated population of 21,310 and a population density of 3,400 persons per km². The total area of the neibourhood is . Annexed by the city in 1941 ...

on September 17 of the same year. Work began immediately on the new castle, with the main bailey completed by August 28, 1604, and a surrounding

castle town A castle town is a settlement built adjacent to or surrounding a castle. Castle towns were common in Medieval Europe. Some examples include small towns like Alnwick and Arundel, which are still dominated by their castles. In Western Europe, ...

laid out. The town continued a planned expansion in 1607, 1619, 1629 and 1631 with a system of streets and moats. However, the castle burned down in a fire on September 21, 1633, during the tenure of

Satake Yoshitaka Satake may refer to: *Satake clan, a Japanese samurai clan originally from Hitachi Province * Satake Corporation, a multinational agricultural equipment maker based in Hiroshima, Japan *Asteroid 8194 Satake *Ichirō Satake (1927–2014), Japanese ...

. It was restored in 1635. The name "Kubota Castle" appears for the first time in official documents dated 1647. Much of the castle town, as well as several castle gates and the ''

'' palace, burned down in a fire on April 2, 1776. The main bailey was destroyed during a subsequent fire caused by a lightning strike on July 10, 1778. Repairs were completed by May 24, 1781. However, another fire on May 10, 1797, destroyed the northern keep, two yagura, two barracks and numerous minor buildings. During the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a clique seeking to seize political power in the name of the Imperi ...

of the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

in 1868, after some vacillation, the Kubota clan supported the new

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji o ...

and as a result came under attack by the forces of the ''

Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei The was a Japanese military-political coalition established and disestablished over the course of several months in early to mid-1868 during the Boshin War. Its flag was either a white interwoven five-pointed star on a black field, or a black i ...

,'' especially the forces from neighboring

Shōnai Domain was a feudal domain in Edo period Japan, located in Dewa Province (modern-day Yamagata Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Tsuruoka Castle in what is now the city of Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture, and was thus also known as the . It was gov ...

. After the end of the war, the castle was surrendered by the Satake clan to the new government on June 17, 1869. With the

abolition of the han system The in the Empire of Japan and its replacement by a system of prefectures in 1871 was the culmination of the Meiji Restoration begun in 1868, the starting year of the Meiji period. Under the reform, all daimyos (, ''daimyō'', feudal lords) ...

in 1871, Kubota Domain was dissolved into Akita Prefecture, and Kubota Castle became the Prefectural Office. Following the relocation of the Akita Prefectural Office on March 13, 1872, the castle was abandoned. Subsequently, most of its moats were filled in to widen city streets, and most of its minor structures were pulled down for scrap. On July 21, 1880 a fire broke out in the abandoned main bailey, and destroyed it and most of the remaining structures. Only one small guardpost in the second bailey survived the fire. One of the remaining gates was removed to a local Buddhist temple in 1886. In 1890, the government returned the barren castle site back to the Satake clan, which subsequently donated the site of the main bailey and second bailey to Akita City for use as a park.

As Senshu Park

The Akita city government planted it with 1170 ''

sakura A cherry blossom, also known as Japanese cherry or sakura, is a flower of many trees of Prunus, genus ''Prunus'' or Prunus subg. Cerasus, ''Prunus'' subg. ''Cerasus''. They are common species in East Asia, including China, Korea and especia ...

'' trees in 1892 and built a

Shinto shrine A is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more ''kami'', the deities of the Shinto religion. Overview Structurally, a Shinto shrine typically comprises several buildings. The '' honden''Also called (本殿, meani ...

on the site of the Main Bailey. However, the city turned the park over to the Akita prefectural government in 1896, who contracted noted garden designer Nagaoka Yasuhei to lay out a new garden. renaming the site as . A

Hachiman shrine A is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the ''kami'' Hachiman. It is the second most numerous type of Shinto shrine after those dedicated to Inari Ōkami (see Inari shrine). There are about 44,000 Hachiman shrines. Originally the name 八幡 was ...

was completed in the grounds in 1907 (the shrine burned down in 2005 and was rebuilt in 2007) and the Iyataka Jinja, a shrine dedicated to

Hirata Atsutane was a Japanese scholar, conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies, and one of the most significant theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was , and his primary assumed name was . He also u ...

. A number of civic buildings, including the Akita City Library, Akita Civic Center,

Akita Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Akita. The original Akita Prefectural Museum of Art was opened on May 5, 1967. The new museum was opened on September 28, 2013. The main exhibit is a collection of works by Tsuguharu Foujita from the collection o ...

and forerunner of the

Akita Omoriyama Zoo The , also known as “Milve”, is a municipal zoo opened in July 1967 in the city of Akita, Akita Prefecture, Japan. Opened in 1972, the zoo covers 15 hectares, with 114 species on display. It is accredited by the Japanese Association of Zoo ...

were built on the site. In 1984, the Satake clan donated the remaining 14.6 hectares of the former castle site to Akita City.

Present day

One of the corner ''yagura'' of the castle was reconstructed in 1989 to boost local tourism. It contains a small history museum. The front gate of the castle was reconstructed in 2001. The castle was listed as one of the 100 Fine Castles of Japan by the in 2006. The site also contains the Satake Historical Material Museum, dedicated to the history of the Satake clan, and the former Kurosawa House, an

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

house, relocated to the park in 1988. The former Kurosawa House is registered as a national Important Cultural Property.Official home page
Akita City home page

Literature

* * * * * *

External links

Kubota Castle Jcastle ProfileOfficial home page

Notes

{{100 Fine Castles of Japan Castles in Akita Prefecture Museums in Akita Prefecture Buildings and structures in Akita (city)