is a Japanese castle located in Shinjō, northern

Yamagata Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Yamagata Prefecture has a population of 1,079,950 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 9,325 km² (3,600 sq mi). Yamagata Prefecture borders Akita Prefecture to the north, ...

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 most of 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 ...

, Shinjō Castle was home to the

Tozawa clan was a Japanese samurai kin group from Mutsu and Dewa Provinces who ruled as ''daimyō'' of Shinjō Domain under the Edo period Tokugawa shogunate. Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japo ...

, ''

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 Shinjō Domain. The castle was also known as or .

History

Tozawa Masamori was the 1st ''daimyō'' of Shinjō Domain in Dewa Province, Japan (part of modern-day Yamagata Prefecture). His courtesy title was ''Ukyō-no-kami'', and his Court rank was Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade. Biography Tozawa Masamori was the ...

, the daimyō of Hitachi-Matsuoka Domain (40,000

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about . It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One ''gō'' is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied ...

) was transferred to Dewa Province in September 1622 following the suppression of the Mogami clan by 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 ...

and gained an increase in revenues to 60,000 koku. His new territory extended over all of what is now Mogami District and a portion of Murayama District in what is now Yamagata Prefecture. Finding the ancient hill-top Sakenobe Castle to be too small and inconveniently located, he successfully petitioned the shogunate for permission to construct a new castle in the flatlands with a main bailey, secondary bailey to the south, all surrounded by a third bailey and wet moats. In 1636, the

donjon A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in c ...

was destroyed in a fire, and was never rebuilt.Japan Castle Explorer
/ref> In 1868, 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 ...

, the castle was the site of the Battle of Shinjō. Following the defection of Kubota Domain from the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei, Shinjō Domain soon followed suit. Shinjō Domain was then invaded by the armies of 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 ...

, and in the subsequent battle, Shinjō Castle and much of its surrounding castle town was destroyed. At present, the site of the main bailey is occupied by four

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 ...

s, with the Temman-gu shrine being the only structure of the original castle to survive (aside for some walls and foundations). The site of the donjon and the second bailey is a public park, and a history museum is located within the precincts of the former third bailey.

Literature

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External links

Official home page

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shinjo Castle Castles in Yamagata Prefecture