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 a ...

in Akita,

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 estimated 915,691 as of 1 August 2023 and its geographi ...

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 ...

. Throughout the

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 ...

, Kubota Castle was home to the

Satake clan The was a Japanese clan, 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 serv ...

, ''

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

Kubota Domain was a Han (Japan), 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, Akita, Akita and was thus also known as the . It was governe ...

, 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 per ...

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

, 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 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 capita ...

fortified settlement of

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

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 The is located in Akita Prefecture, Japan. The river flows from Mount Daisen on the border of Akita Prefecture with Miyagi and Yamagata Prefectures in the city of Yuzawa and drains into the Sea of Japan at the city of Akita. The river's draina ...

, incorporating the river and adjacent wetlands into its defenses. The main bailey was protected by a system of wet moats, earthenworks and eight '' yagura'' 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 '' Sakon-no-e-shōshō'', later '' ...

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

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

in 1602, and arrived at the site of the

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

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. 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 coalition seeking to seize political power in the name of the Impe ...

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 Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

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 ...

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 ...

,'' especially the forces from neighboring

Shōnai Domain was a Han (Japan), 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, Yamagata, Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture, and was t ...

. 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 The cherry blossom, or sakura, is the flower of trees in ''Prunus'' subgenus '' Cerasus''. ''Sakura'' usually refers to flowers of ornamental cherry trees, such as cultivars of ''Prunus serrulata'', not trees grown for their fruit (although ...

'' trees in 1892 and built a

Shinto shrine A Stuart D. B. Picken, 1994. p. xxiii is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more kami, , the deities of the Shinto religion. The Also called the . is where a shrine's patron is or are enshrined.Iwanami Japanese dic ...

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 rea ...

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 19th century theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was , and his primary assumed name ...

. A number of civic buildings, including the Akita City Library, Akita Civic Center, Akita Museum of Art and forerunner of the Akita Omoriyama 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 The Japanese castle, castles in were chosen based on their significance in culture, history, and in their regions by the in 2006. In 2017, the Japanese Castle Association created an additional finest 100 castles list as Continued Top 100 Japane ...

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 The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

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

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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)