is a flatland-style

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 ...

located in the center of the city of

Yonezawa Yonezawa City Hall is a city in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 81,707 in 33,278 households, and a population density of 150 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Yonezawa is most famous for ...

, southern

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 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 ...

, Yonezawa Castle was home to the

Uesugi clan The is a Japanese samurai clan which was at its peak one of the most powerful during the Muromachi and Sengoku periods (14th to 17th centuries). Appert, Georges. (1888) ''Ancien Japon,'' p. 79./ref> At its height, the clan had three main branch ...

, ''

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

Yonezawa Domain was a Han (Japan), feudal domain in Edo period Japan, located in Dewa Province (modern-day Yamagata Prefecture), Japan. It was centered at Yonezawa castle in what is now the city of Yamagata, Yamagata, Yamagata, and its territory extended over t ...

History

The first castle on this site dates to the middle of the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

. Ōe Tokihiro, the younger son of

Ōe no Hiromoto Ōe no Hiromoto (, 1148–1225) was a Japanese ''kuge'' (court noble) and vassal of the Kamakura shogunate, and contributed to establishing the shogunate's governmental structure. Life A great-grandson of the famous scholar Ōe no Masafu ...

, a senior retainer of the

Kamakura shogunate The was the feudal military government of Japan during the Kamakura period from 1185 to 1333. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Kamakura-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 459. The Kamakura shogunate was established by Minamoto no Y ...

was granted lands in

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 ...

, and in 1238 changed his name to Nagai Tokihiro. The Nagai continued to rule for about 150 years. The Nagai were supplanted in the

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

by the

Date clan The is a Japanese samurai kin group. Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon''; Papinot, (2003)"Date", ''Nobiliare du Japon'', p. 5 retrieved 2013-5-5. History The Date family was founded ...

, and the famed warlord

Date Masamune was a regional ruler of Japan's Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful ''daimyō'' in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai. An outstanding tactician, he was made all ...

was born at Yonezawa Castle. After Date Masamune defeated the

Ashina clan Ashina may refer to: *Ashina tribe, a ruling dynasty of the Turkic Khaganate *Ashina clan (Japan), one of the Japanese clans *Ashina District, Hiroshima, a former Japanese district *Empress Ashina (551–582), empress of the Chinese/Xianbei dynasty ...

in 1589, he moved his main castle to

Kurokawa Castle , also known as Tsuruga Castle (鶴ヶ城 ''Tsuru-ga-jō'') is a concrete replica of a traditional Japanese castle in northern Japan, at the center of the city of Aizuwakamatsu, in Fukushima Prefecture. Background Aizu Wakamatsu Castle is locate ...

Aizu is the westernmost of the three regions of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, the other two regions being Nakadōri in the central area of the prefecture and Hamadōri in the east. As of October 1, 2010, it had a population of 291,838. The princip ...

and put Date Munekiyo in charge of Yonezawa. However,

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...

did not agree, and forced Masamune move back to Yonezawa. In 1591, Masamune relocated to Iwadeyama Castle by orders of Hideyoshi, surrendering Yonezawa Castle to

Gamō Ujisato or Gamō Yasuhide was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Sengoku and Azuchi–Momoyama periods. He was heir and son of Gamō Katahide, lord of Hino Castle in Ōmi Province, he later held Matsusaka (Ise Province) and finally Aizuwakamatsu Castle in M ...

. When Ujisato’s son,

Gamō Hideyuki was a Japanese ''daimyō'' who ruled the Aizu domain. He was the son of Gamō Ujisato. A Catholic, Hideyuki was moved to Utsunomiya (180,000 ''koku'') in Shimotsuke Province after his father died in 1595. In 1600, he was given Aizu, worth 600,000 ...

was moved to Utsunomiya in 1597, the castle was turned over to

Uesugi Kagekatsu was a Japanese samurai ''daimyō'' during the Sengoku and Edo periods. He was the adopted son of Uesugi Kenshin and Uesugi Kagetora’s brother in law. Early life and rise Kagekatsu was the son of Nagao Masakage, the head of the Ueda Nagao c ...

, as part of their vast 1,200,000 ''

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 ...

'' holdings based in Aizu. The castellan at this time was

Naoe Kanetsugu was a Japanese samurai of the 16th–17th centuries. The eldest son of Higuchi Kanetoyo, Kanetsugu was famed for his service to two generations of the Uesugi ''daimyōs''. He was also known by his court title, Yamashiro no Kami (山城守) or h ...

. However, after the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu prefecture, Japan, at the end of ...

, the Uesugi were stripped of most of their holdings 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 ...

, and were reduced to a 300,000 ''koku'' domain centered on Yonezawa. From 1608-1613, the Uesugi completely renovated the castle. However, due to the reduction in size of their holdings as compared with Aizu and the suspicion with which the clan was viewed 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 ...

, the defensive earthen works were not faced with stone, and

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 kept to a modest three-stories. The Uesugi also relocated the grave of their founder,

Uesugi Kenshin , later known as was a Japanese ''daimyō''. He was born in Nagao clan, and after adoption into the Uesugi clan, ruled Echigo Province in the Sengoku period of Japan. He was one of the most powerful ''daimyō'' of the Sengoku period. Known as ...

from

Echigo Province was an old province in north-central Japan, on the shores of the Sea of Japan. It bordered on Uzen, Iwashiro, Kōzuke, Shinano, and Etchū Provinces. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Echigo''" in . It corresponds today to Niigata ...

to within the walls of Yonezawa Castle. In 1664, the clan revenues were halved to 150,000 ''koku'', forcing it to lay off many samurai, and for many others to take up part-time farming. However, the castle remained in the hands of the Uesugi clan until 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 ...

. 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, Yonezawa Domain became Yonezawa Prefecture, and in 1872 Uesugi Shrine, honoring the ancestors of the Uesugi clan, was established within the grounds of the castle. All remaining structures were demolished in 1873 and in the second bailey, the present-day Yonezawa city hall was constructed. The main bailey was transformed into a public park in 1874. The Uesugi Shrine was transferred to its present location on top of the site of the donjon in 1876.

References

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External links

Yonezawa Castle Jcastle Profile
{{Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles Buildings and structures completed in 1238 Castles in Yamagata Prefecture Date clan Uesugi clan