31 new contributions from ART
31 new contributions from ART
2022/04/02
This is the last in the series of contributions from ART . I put together all the Nagano Prefecture updates together and these now cover a variety of prefectures from Kyoto to Niigata Prefecture. See the castles and map below for details. If you haven't seen his Facebook Japanese Castle Group yet I highly encourage you to do so. There are contributions from a variety of members, discussion and news about castle developments and discoveries.
Aoki Yakata / 青木館
Chouzenjimae Jinya / 長禅寺前陣屋
Echigo Kanayama Castle / 越後金山城
Echigo Katsuyama Castle / 越後勝山城
Itoigawa is famous for being the location of Japan's "Jade Coast", and is the site of the world's oldest known ornamental jade culture. Although the town centre itself chose to destroy its beach with a by-pass in the 1970s, the coast north and south of town is made up of beaches of colourful pebbles, of which jade rocks are numerous. This is part of the "Itoigawa UNESCO Global Geopark". I descended onto the beach to get a good look of the castle mount of Katsuyamajō from below. There was a ball of something covered in barnacles. The barnacles were large and had gaping, fanged mouths with black, lolling tongues. The sand was as black as soil. Pebbles were strewn in long piles all along. My hometown is on a peninsula, and I am not unfamiliar with beach ecosystems, but, with the notable exception of the Tottori sand dunes, this was my first time visiting a beach on the Japan Sea, and I found it quite alien.
The trail to Katsuyamajō is very steep - but there are stairs and ropes - with many switch-backs. Anyone of reasonable health could struggle up though I think. It was quite unusual as I methodically plodded upward to have to my side not some dark forest or rural vista, but a clear canvas of grey and blue. I had the sensation of being much higher up than I was. The salty air which rose up was invigorating.Echigo Kiyosaki Castle / 越後清崎城
Echigo Matsudai Castle / 越後松代城
Matsudai Castle is located in Matsudai Town, incorporated into Tōkamachi Municipality since 2005, and is known for its beautiful terraced hillsides of rice paddies, particularly at Hoshitōge. Railway came to Matsudai in the 1997 with the construction of the Hokuhoku Line, which, being a modern line, cuts rapidly beneath many mountains and is mostly tunnels connecting coastal Niigata with the Shinano River valley area. This helped develop the town as a travel destination with small markets and an art gallery near the station. It has also attracted the attention of the international art community, it seems, and between the castle and Matsudai Station are many large pieces of modern art and sculptures in the so-called Nobutai ("Field Stage") park which mixes rice paddies and "art". This made the hike up quite interesting, though I appreciated the rice paddies and trails much more than some of the art pieces intergrated into (or should I say segregated within?) them. I'm not sure when the park was developed. Some plots and trails are overgrown now, and some art pieces may have been removed or lost their details, but generally speaking things are in good shape. I arrived in Matsudai at 8:30, but from about 10:00 it's possible to get a shuttle bus or take a rental bicycle between the gallery and the castle. The bicycles I think are free and are also eletronically assisted for climbing the mountain road. But taking a combination of park trails and the main footpath means that the hike is anycase not a long or difficult one.
It is within the above expounded context that we find the mock castle tower of Matsudai Castle. Curiously it was built in 1981, so I'm not sure if there was a large tourist presence then or not, but the castle tower was built cheaply and probably intended chiefly as an observation tower. The tower cuts a pretty shabby appearance, even by mogi standards, but within is the soul of an artist! This mogi, which would probably be abandoned otherwise, has been given new life as a host to modern art installations! The first floor is so disjointed from the outside appearance of the castle that I was simply blown away. The entire first floor is the art piece. Probably we've all seen its like before, that sort of sickly confusion of geometry focusing a central "thing", in this case a gigantic scrunched up bauble. Yet within the husk of this old mogi it becomes quite the novelty, and the rear of the room has a castle style heavy gate which was part of the original mogi construction.
The top floor is tasteful and gives access to the veranda for views. But the second floor is my favourite. It has a golden teahouse. But first there is a corridor which wraps around, in nice wood, and the entry to the teahouse room is through a half door - like the teahouse itself. The teahouse is, as I say, golden, and has many beautiful images of nature adorning it. I suppose it's inspired by the golden teahouse which Oda Nobunaga built at Aźuchi Castle; is this small mogi not now a rival to Aźuchijō! The teahouse is veiled in dark which makes the gold effulgent; whoever designed this understood well aesthetic principles most ancient. The walls are gold with black streaks which evoke a deep bamboo forest, and the pathway is surrounded by dark pebbles which made me think of obsidian (I'm not a geologist). Although the teahouse itself cannot be entered, and so can only be appreciated from without, I was very pleased with it. I made many tours of the path around it in that room, and would've made many more but there were a surprising number of visitors pressing into the tower.
As for the ruins of the actual castle, Matsudaijō is has a very long profile which follows the undulation of the ridge of the castle mount. The main bailey is centrally located. Deep horikiri (trenhces) intervene between narrow baileys, especially to the rear of the shukuruwa (main bailey) and there are terraced and climbing baileys both along the central trunk of the castle and along various spurs. The carved earthen walls of the castle are incredibly tall. I followed a trail into the main bailey, but there was no trail beyond where the terrain was incredibly steep, a sheer wall of earth to navigate! Clearly most visitors to the castle ruins themselves still do not pass beyond here. I went the whole length of the castle, however, climbing up and down these trenches and terraces between baileys. After a final deep trench the castle's precincts begin to taper off where there is a farmed highland area which connects to the mountain, and where there is a pass cut for foot traffic beneath a swing up in the elevation I would consider to be the end of it.
I didn't explore several spurs of the castle at lower elevation because I was eager to get back to the mogi tenshu which was still being opened up by staff when I arrived. But I saw most of it, including all of the integral baileys and trenches along the ridge line, and was very happy with so much to explore, having expected little more than the mogi tenshu. I would say that this is a great site in its own right regardless of the mock keep even though it appears to be little explored except by dedicated yamajiro fans.Ichigouyama Castle / 一郷山城
Ichikawa Jinya / 市川陣屋
Itoigawa Jinya / 糸魚川陣屋
Kaga Utasu Castle / 加賀宇多須城
Kai Genji Yakata / 甲斐源氏館
Kai Ueno Castle / 甲斐上野城
Minegadou Castle / 山城谷ヶ堂城
Nagaikeyama Fort / 長池山砦
The whole thing seemed like it had been a foolhardy escapade to waste my own time. I had two options at this point. Continue on to Kasugayamajō, which I had intended to do if I had the time, or descend. But I had ran out of time and, frankly, energy by this time, and, though Kasugayamajō is probably fine to explore in summer, being well maintained, I decided I’d call it quits since I’ve been before and would rather return in autumn. Plus the trail ahead seemed no more clear than where I had ascended from, which was grueling. I decided to skip the main site and move instead immediately onto the site of the Uesugi-yakata, the fortified manor house of the Uesugi Clan, also known as Otate.
Descending from the fort’s main bailey then, I found a much clearer trail. After this my mood brightened. In descending I was also able to identify, and reasonably photograph, earthworks of the old fort, including embankments and earthen bridges. Finally I had something to show for my efforts! (The ridge I came up by had some terracing but the dense flora made photographing this impossible.)
The trail almost emerged in a park, but not before it was swamped by thick bamboo, forcing me to go back over steep terrain, and I got stung by a plant as a parting gift from the mountain, but luckily not badly. The park I emerged in, coming out of the woods like some shambolic bigfoot, was beautiful, and it is apparently a top autumn foliage-viewing site. I caught my breath here and dried out. The park is on the hillside and seems to have been worked into a series of trenches terminating in a flat area where the bamboo blocked my path. I couldn’t figure it out; was it an extension of the fort? Another fort? Something else entirely? There are over a dozen branch forts of Kasugayamajō, and dozens of satellite castles. It could easily have been another site, but despite the mind-numbing vastness of this network of fortifications, very little information is readily available about the outer environs of what is arguably the most famous medieval yamajiro (mountaintop castle) in all of the land...
I did myself near ugly then but I managed to explore a small part of the fortified network which protected the Uesugi heartlands, and plant my metaphorical flag on a lonely peak. It would take many days and much hiking to explore all of the branch forts. One day I might put together an expedition!Nechi Castle / 根知城
Nechi Kamijouyama Castle / 根知上城山城
Nechi Kuriyama Castle / 根知栗山城
Oumi Higuchi Castle / 近江樋口城
Oumi Kadone Castle / 門根城
Oumi Nagaoka Castle / 近江長岡城
Oumi Notose Castle / 近江能登瀬城
Samegai Castle / 醒ヶ井城
Shimomisu Castle / 三栖城
Tarui Castle / 垂井城
Tawada Castle / 多和田城
Tonoyama Fort / 殿山砦
Toujou Fort / 東城砦
Tsukanokoshikofun Fort / 塚ノ越古墳砦
Uesugi Yakata / 上杉館
Yamashiro Amidagamine Castle / 山城阿弥陀ヶ峰城
Yamashiro Tanigadou Castle / 山城谷ヶ堂城
Zaoudou Castle / 蔵王堂城
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