was an ancient castle (also known as a located in the city of

Hikari may refer to: Places * Hikari Station, a station on Sanyō Main Line in Hikari, Yamaguchi * Hikari, Chiba, a former town in Sousa District, Chiba, Japan * Hikari, Yamaguchi, a city in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan People * Hikari (name), people a ...

Yamaguchi Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Yamaguchi Prefecture has a population of 1,377,631 (1 February 2018) and has a geographic area of 6,112 Square kilometre, km2 (2,359 Square mile, sq mi). ...

, in the

San'yō region The San'yō Region (山陽地方 ''San'yō-chihō'') is an area in the south of Honshū, the main island of Japan. It consists of the southern part of the Chūgoku region, facing the Seto Inland Sea. The name ''San'yō'' means "southern, sunny ( ...

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 ...

. Its ruins have been protected as a National Historic Site since 1951.

History

After the defeat of the combined

Baekje Baekje or Paekche (; ) was a Korean kingdom located in southwestern Korea from 18 BCE to 660 CE. It was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, together with Goguryeo and Silla. While the three kingdoms were in separate existence, Baekje had the h ...

and Yamato Japan forces, at the hands of the

Silla Silla (; Old Korean: wikt:徐羅伐#Old Korean, 徐羅伐, Yale romanization of Korean, Yale: Syerapel, Revised Romanization of Korean, RR: ''Seorabeol''; International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: ) was a Korean kingdom that existed between ...

and

Tang China The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

alliance at the

Battle of Hakusukinoe The Battle of Baekgang () or Battle of Baekgang-gu, also known as the Battle of Hakusukinoe () in Japan, and as the Battle of Baijiangkou ( zh, c=白江口之战, p=Bāijiāngkǒu Zhīzhàn, t=白江口之戰) in China, was a battle between Baek ...

in 663, the Yamato court feared an invasion from either or both Tang or Silla. In response, they built a huge network of shore fortifications throughout the rest of the 600s, often with the assistance of Baekje engineers, generals and artisans. Unaware of the outbreak of the Silla-Tang War (670–676), the Japanese would continue to build fortifications until 701, after finding out that Silla was no longer friendly with Tang. The Iwakisan kōgoshi is one such fortification. The Iwakisan Kōgoshi is located on Mount Iwaki (elevation 362 meters) on the Murozu Peninsula which projects into the western

Seto Inland Sea The , sometimes shortened to the Inland Sea, is the body of water separating Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, three of the four main islands of Japan. It serves as a waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan. It connects to Osaka Ba ...

. It was strategically located not only to control the western entrance to the Seto Inland Sea, but overlooked an anchorage which could be used to intercept ships passing from the Kanmon Strait. It is not mentioned in historical documents such as ''

Nihon Shoki The or , sometimes translated as ''The Chronicles of Japan'', is the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history. It is more elaborate and detailed than the , the oldest, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeol ...

'', and the year of construction is unknown. The fortifications form a band which completely encompasses the top of the mountain, with a total length of 2.6 kilometers. There are four valleys in the north, south, east, and west, in which stone walls and water gates were installed. There were two castle gates, to the east and the north. The walls were constructed of locally quarried stone block, measuring 70 cm by 50 to 100 centimeters and 40 to 60 centimeters thick. Although now exposed, it is known that they were buried in the earthworks in the past and served to provide earth retention and reinforcement of earthen ramparts. These ramparts were about eight meters high, with walls at an angle of 60 to 90 degrees. There is a rammed-earth mound in the center of the fortification, which was created by shaving the slopes from a natural hill, solidifying the foundation and piling up the front and back with rammed earth. The fortification ruins were introduced to academia in 1909. Prior to this, the site was thought to be a " kōgoishi", a name coined by the

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 ...

archaeologist Tsuboi Shōgorō, who conjectured that such sites were spiritual or sacred sites. Scholars after Tsuboi determined that the structures are most likely the remains of practical, military fortifications, and were unlikely to have significant spiritual connections. The style and form of the ruins matches many in Korea; In the

Bakumatsu period were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunat ...

, the mountain was used a headquarters and training grounds for

Chōshū Domain The , also known as the , was a domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871.Deal, William E. (2005) ''Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan,'' p. 81 The Chōshū Domain was based ...

Kiheitai The was a volunteer militia raised by Takasugi Shinsaku of the Chōshū Domain, Chōshū domain during the Bakumatsu period of Japan. Background Formed in 1863 by Takasugi Shinsaku in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, the Kiheitai militia cons ...

militia. The site was excavated 1963 to 1964 by the Cultural Properties Protection Committee (now the

Agency for Cultural Affairs The is a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). It was set up in 1968 to promote Japanese arts and culture. The agency's budget for FY 2018 rose to ¥107.7 billion. Overview The age ...

), the Yamaguchi Prefectural Board of Education, and the Yamato Village Board of Education (now Hikari City). Part of the stone wall collapsed due to torrential rain in 2004, but conservation repairs were carried out in 2006, with

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

was used for the base in order to distinguish it from the existing remains.

Access

The site is about 60 minutes on foot from Iwata Station on the

JR West , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, ...

Sanyo Main Line is a former Japanese electronics manufacturer founded in 1947 by Toshio Iue, the brother-in-law of Kōnosuke Matsushita, the founder of Matsushita Electric Industrial, now known as Panasonic. Iue left Matsushita Electric to start his own busi ...

Gallery

File:Iwakisan Kōgoishi 01.JPG, Monument on Yamaguchi Prefectural Route 160 File:Iwakisan Kōgoishi West sluice 01.JPG, Western Watergate ruins File:Iwakisan Kōgoishi North sluice 01.JPG, Northern Watergate ruins File:Iwakisan Kōgoishi East sluice 02.JPG, Eastern Watergate ruins and walls File:Iwakisan Kōgoishi North gate.JPG, Ruins of North Gate File:Iwakisan Kōgoishi Kutsu-ishi.JPG, Ruins of North Gate

References

Literature

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External links