was a flatland type

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 a ...

located in the city of

Amagasaki 270px, Amagasaki Castle 270px, Aerial view of Amagasaki city center 270px, Amagasaki Station is an industrial city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 455,555 in 223,812 households, and a population de ...

Hyōgo Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to th ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. The castle was the headquarters of

Amagasaki Domain file:Amagasaki Castle Tenshu 20181125.jpg, 250px, Reconstructed Amagasaki Castle tenshu was a Han (Japan), feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Settsu Province in what is now the southeastern portion of mod ...

, which ruled this portion of northern

Settsu Province was a province of Japan, which today comprises the southeastern part of Hyōgo Prefecture and the northern part of Osaka Prefecture. It was also referred to as or . Osaka and Osaka Castle were the main center of the province. Most of Settsu's ...

under the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

Edo Period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

. The castle was destroyed in the early

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

, but a portion was reconstructed in 2018.

History

In October of 1578,

Araki Murashige was a retainer of Ikeda Katsumasa, head of the powerful "Setssu-Ikeda clan" of Settsu Province. Under Katsumasa, Murashige sided with Oda Nobunaga following Nobunaga's successful campaign to establish power in Kyoto. Military life Murashige b ...

rebelled against

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...

. In August of 1579 while surrounded by Nobunaga's military forces during the

Siege of Itami (1579) The second , also called the during the Sengoku period of Japanese history, occurred in 1579, five years after it was seized by Oda Nobunaga in Siege of Itami (1574) from Itami clan, and entrusted the Castle to Araki Murashige. Background I ...

, Murashige fled to Amagasaki Castle. In November 1579, after Nobunaga secured control of Itami castle, "Araki Kyūzaemon and other leading figures, leaving their wives and children behind as hostages in Itami Castle, headed for Amagasaki to remonstrate with Araki Murashige and persuade him to hand over Amagasaki and Hanakuma." Araki Murashige refused to surrender Amagaski and Hanakuma Castles. As a result, Nobunaga ordered the execution of 670 political hostages, the majority of whom were women and children. Toda Ujikane built the present Amagasaki Castle in 1617 when he became ''

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 no ...

'' of the 50,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'' Amagasaki Domain. There was an earlier, smaller castle, originally built by the

Hosokawa clan The is a Japanese samurai kin group or Japanese clan, clan. The clan descends from the Seiwa Genji, a branch of the Minamoto clan, and ultimately from Emperor Seiwa, through the Ashikaga clan. It produced many prominent officials in the Ashikaga ...

, in the

Sengoku period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

on site. Amagasaki Castle was built around it. The site was strategic, located the delta area where the Omotsu River (currently reclaimed land) and the Shoge River flow into

Osaka Bay Osaka Bay (大阪湾 ''Ōsaka-wan'' ) is a bay in western Japan. As an eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea, it is separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Kii Channel and from the neighbor western part of the Inland Sea by the Akashi Strait. I ...

. As completed, ships were able to dock directly at Amagasaki Castle. The castle had a triple concentric moat, and the central

enclosure Enclosure or inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land", enclosing it, and by doing so depriving commoners of their traditional rights of access and usage. Agreements to enc ...

had a four-story

tenshu is an architectural typology found in Japanese castle, Japanese castle complexes. They are easily identifiable as the highest tower within the castle. Common translations of ''tenshu'' include keep, main keep, or ''donjon''. ''Tenshu'' are cha ...

with two two-story ''yagura'' turrets, and additional three-story ''yagura'' turrets at each corner of the enclosure. This Honmaru enclosure was almost square, measuring 115 meters in both east-west and north-south directions. In 1846, the Honmaru Palace (the residence of the ''daimyō'') burned down, but was reconstructed the following year. Following 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 Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

, all of the buildings in the castle were auctioned, and most were purchased by merchants in Osaka, dismantled and carted off. The subsequent fate of most of these structures is unknown. A portion of the ''daimyō'' residence survived in the main hall of the Shinsho-in, a Buddhist temple in Amagasaki, but was destroyed in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. At present, the site of the Honmaru enclosure is occupied by Amagasaki Municipal Meijo Elementary School, and most of the other enclosures and reclaimed inner and outer moats are occupied by city-related facilities and residential land. Only the northern half of the area was maintained as the Amagasaki Castle Ruins Park; however, the stone wall remnants in this park are all faux reproductions. The Amagasaki City Board of Education has conducted

archaeological excavation In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...

s on the site more than 20 times, and artifacts discovered are preserved at the Amagasaki City Museum of History.

Current site

In 2015, a local entrepreneur offered to fund the reconstruction of a tenshu based on drawings and archaeological research, and additional funds were raised by public donation. Construction began in April 2018 and was completed in March 2019. In mid-2018 all of the exterior, including the ornate third-story roof, were complete. However, the site in Amagasaki Castle Ruins Park is where the original Nishi San-no-maru enclosure was located, and is about 300 meters northwest of the site of the original tenshu.

Gallery

Amagasakij.jpg, Layout Amagasakij2.jpg, Amagasaki Castle pre-1871 尼崎城5.jpg, Map, dated 1635

References

{{Reflist Former castles in Japan 1617 establishments in Japan Castles in Hyōgo Prefecture Settsu Province Amagasaki

History

Current site

Gallery

Further reading

References