260px, Layout of Aoba Castle Old Oote-mon of Sendai Castle in 1938 cropped

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 ...

located in

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,098,335 in 539,698 households, making it the List of cities in Japan, twelfth most populated city in Japan. ...

, Miyagi Prefecture. 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 ...

, Aoba Castle was home to the

Date clan The is a Japanese samurai kin group.Edmond Papinot, 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 fam ...

, ''

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

Sendai Domain The , also known as the , was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Sendai Domain was based at Aoba Castle in Mutsu Province, in the modern city of Sendai, located in the Tōhoku region of ...

. The castle was also known as or as . In 2003, the castle ruins were designated a National Historic Site.

Design

Aoba Castle is located on a plateau overlooking the city of

, on the opposing bank of the Hirose river. The site is protected by cliffs to the south and east and by a forest to the west. This forest was strictly guarded in the

and is a rare survivor of the original virgin forests of

Honshū , historically known as , is the largest of the four main islands of Japan. It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian ...

. The area is now managed as a botanical garden by

Tohoku University is a public research university in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. It is colloquially referred to as or . Established in 1907 as the third of the Imperial Universities, after the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, it initially focused on sc ...

. The castle hill is partially surrounded by the Hirose river to the north and east, and a steep slope protects the south. The ''honmaru'' (inner bailey) is about 115 meters high and is a roughly square-shaped area 250 meters long surrounded by stone walls, in some places 15 meters high. It contained the foundation for the ''

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 ...

'', (equivalent to the main keep of European castles); however, only the foundation base was ever built. Instead, the ''honmaru'' was protected by four three-story ''yagura''. The ''

'' residence within the ''honmaru'' was built in the flamboyant Momoyama style, and contemporaries compared it with

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

's legendary Jurakudai Palace in Kyoto. North of the ''honmaru'' was the ''ni-no-maru'' (second bailey) and the ''san-no-maru'' (third bailey), followed by an area containing the residences of the highest

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 ...

officials of the domain. The ''ni-no-maru'' was used for both governmental functions and was the location of the main residence of the ''daimyō''. The ''honmaru'' was reserved only for certain ceremonial functions. A bridge across the Hirose river led to the ''higashi-no-maru'' (east bailey), which also had the ''ōte-mon'' (main gate) of the castle.

History

The location of Aoba Castle, a small hill called Mount Aoba, was the site of a fortified residence of a branch of the Shimazu clan, the nominal '' kokushi'' of Mutsu Province from the early

Kamakura period The is a period of History of Japan, Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the G ...

. In the

Muromachi period The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...

, it was controlled by the ''

jizamurai The were lower-ranking provincial samurai that emerged in 15th-century Japan Muromachi period. The definition was rather broad and the term ''jizamurai'' included landholding military aristocracy as well as independent peasant farmers. They alt ...

'' Kokubun clan, which was in turn destroyed by the

. Following the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was an important battle in Japan which occurred on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu Prefecture, ...

in 1601, the area was visited 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 ...

, who renamed Mount Aoba "Sendai". The first ''daimyō'' of Sendai domain,

Date Masamune was a Japanese ''daimyō'' during the Azuchi–Momoyama period through the early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful feudal lords in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai. An outstanding tactician, he w ...

, began construction of the castle with the inner bailey and ''san-no-maru'' bailey at the base of the hill. Work on the castle, including the ''san-no-maru'' bailey and numerous gates, was completed by Date Tadamune in 1637. After completion, the castle served as the headquarters of the Date clan and administrative center of Mutsu Province 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 ...

. The castle was destroyed repeatedly by earthquakes and fires, notably in 1616, 1648, 1668, and 1710. More than six major earthquakes occurred between 1710 and 1868, but there is no record of major damage. During the Bakumatsu period, the castle was one of the nerve centers of the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei 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 ...

, as Date Yoshikuni was leader of the pro-Tokugawa alliance. Taken over by the

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 ...

in the aftermath of Sendai's surrender, it was partially dismantled in the 1870s, and the grounds were given over to the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

, who used it as the base for the Sendai Garrison (later the IJA 2nd Division). A large fire in 1882 destroyed many of the remaining structures of the castle. In 1902, a

Shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...

honoring the war dead was established. In 1931, two of the few remaining structures of the castle, the ''omotemon'' gate and the ''wakiyagura'' tower, were designated as National Treasures by the Japanese government. However, these structures and all else in the castle were destroyed completely on 10 July 1945 by the United States during the Bombing of Sendai during World War II. During the

occupation of Japan Japan was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945, at the war's end until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952. The occupation, led by the ...

, the castle site came under the control of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

, which razed any remaining Edo period-structures. It was returned to Japan in 1957. In 1961, the Sendai City Museum was built on the site of the ''san-no-maru'' enclosure. Over the following decades, the stone base, a few walls, and some wooden structures have been rebuilt to increase the tourist potential of the site, and in 2006, Aoba Castle was designated one of the 100 Fine Castles of Japan.

Literature

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References

External links

Sendai Castle Jcastle profile
(archived)

{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Sendai Castles in Miyagi Prefecture Meiji Restoration Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei Historic Sites of Japan Buildings and structures in Japan destroyed during World War II Date clan