Themes
Demolition, fire, earthquakes. Time and again it was local people who saved and rebuilt their castles. These articles tell those stories.
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Nemuro, Hokkaido
根室半島チャシ跡群
Number one on Japan's list of 100 great castles has no keep and no stone walls: just ditches and earth mounds dug by the Ainu on headlands above the sea.
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Hakodate, Hokkaido
五稜郭
From above it is a giant star ringed by a moat: a fort the shogunate built on the European model, designed for the age of cannon.
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Matsumae, Hokkaido
松前城
Built on the shogunate's orders to face down foreign ships, this was the last and northernmost castle built in the traditional Japanese style, with seven gun batteries lined up toward the sea.
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Hirosaki, Aomori
弘前城
An original Edo-period keep is moving on rails right now: shifted aside 11 years ago so its stone base could be rebuilt, it is on its way back in 2026.
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Hachinohe, Aomori
根城
A castle of earth and timber with no keep or stone walls, whose late-16th-century main enclosure has been rebuilt, building by building, from the post holes found in excavation.
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Morioka, Iwate
盛岡城
Almost no buildings survive, yet the stone walls alone tell 90 years of castle building, from rough natural stones laid around 1600 to neatly squared blocks dated 1686, all within one castle.
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Tagajō, Miyagi
多賀城
In a small hall beside the south gate stands a stone that still announces, in its own carved words, that this "castle" was founded in 724.
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Miyagi
仙台城
Inside the 17-meter stone wall of the main enclosure, archaeologists found two older walls, each built and then buried after earthquakes brought it down.
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Akita, Akita
久保田城
It was the seat of a domain worth over 200,000 koku of rice, yet it had almost no stone walls and never had a keep.
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Yamagata, Yamagata
山形城
When a film needed the gate of Edo Castle, it was Yamagata Castle's Ninomaru East Otemon Gate that played the part.
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Nihonmatsu, Fukushima
二本松城
A medieval mountain stronghold and an Edo-period castle of stone walls sit layered on the very same hill.
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Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima
会津若松城
The only castle in Japan today where you can see a keep roofed in red tiles.
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Shirakawa, Fukushima
白河小峰城
When the earthquake brought its stone walls down, every stone was put back exactly where it came from.
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Chiyoda, Tokyo
江戸城
After its 58-meter keep burned in 1657, it was never rebuilt; only the huge stone base remains, in a garden of the Imperial Palace.
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Hachiōji, Tokyo
八王子城
A mountain castle that fell, still unfinished, while its lord Hojo Ujiteru was away defending Odawara.
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Mito, Ibaraki
水戸城
The castle of the Mito Tokugawa, one of the shogun's three senior branch families, defended not by stone walls but by deep moats and earthen ramparts.
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Ashikaga, Tochigi
足利氏館
The ancestral home of the Ashikaga shoguns became a temple, and its moat and earthen banks have survived around the temple grounds for 800 years.
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Takasaki, Gunma
箕輪城
In just over 30 years it passed from the Takeda to the Oda, the Hojo and the Tokugawa, until Ii Naomasa moved the castle to Takasaki and it was abandoned.
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Ōta, Gunma
金山城
A Warring States mountain fort with no keep, yet on the summit you walk a stone-paved path between tall stone walls.
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Sakura, Chiba
佐倉城
A castle of earth and water, with no stone walls, whose lords included nine of the shogun's senior councilors.
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Odawara, Kanagawa
小田原城
To face Toyotomi Hideyoshi, its lords wrapped the whole town, not just the castle, in 9 km of moats and earthen walls.
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Yorii, Saitama
鉢形城
A Hojo stronghold whose earthen walls were faced with river stones stacked like stairs.
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Kawagoe, Saitama
川越城
There was never a keep, but the grand entrance and great hall of a daimyo's palace still stand from the Edo period.
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Nagano, Nagano
松代城
Takeda Shingen built it as his front line in the Kawanakajima wars, and the Sanada family later lived here for 250 years.
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Ueda, Nagano
上田城
This is the Sanada clan's castle that twice drove back Tokugawa armies, yet the turrets standing today were built after the Sanada had gone.
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Komoro, Nagano
小諸城
To reach this castle you walk down from the town, not up: Komoro is a "hole castle."
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Matsumoto, Nagano
松本城
A black keep built for war is joined to a red-railed moon-viewing turret built in a time of peace.
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Ina, Nagano
高遠城
A castle site with no keep and no tall stone walls, filled instead with 1,500 cherry trees of a single variety.
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Kofu, Yamanashi
武田氏館
The residence where Takeda Shingen lived is now the grounds of a shrine where he is worshiped.
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Kofu, Yamanashi
甲府城
Kofu Station itself stands on the site of one of the castle's enclosures.
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Shibata, Niigata
新発田城
On the roof of the turret that served as the castle's keep, there are three shachi ornaments instead of the usual pair.
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Jōetsu, Niigata
春日山城
Uesugi Kenshin's castle had no stone walls and no keep: it was carved out of an entire mountain.
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Sakai, Fukui
丸岡城
An original castle keep that collapsed with its stone base in an earthquake, then was put back together using more than 70 percent of its old timbers.
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Fukui, Fukui
一乗谷城
The castle was on the mountaintop; the lord, his retainers and townspeople lived on the valley floor below. An entire Sengoku-era castle town came out of the ground here.
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Nanao, Ishikawa
七尾城
A giant mountain castle spread over seven ridges in Noto, whose view so impressed its conqueror, Uesugi Kenshin, that he wrote it was even finer than he had heard.
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Kanazawa, Ishikawa
金沢城
The roofs of the gates and turrets look silvery white because the tiles are wrapped in sheets of lead.
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Takaoka, Toyama
高岡城
More than a third of the castle site is water: moats dug 400 years ago still lie in the middle of town in almost their original shape.
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Inuyama, Aichi
犬山城
Atop a cliff over the Kiso River stands a keep built before the Edo period, and you can walk all the way around its top-floor balcony looking down on the river and the Nobi Plain.
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Aichi
名古屋城
The keep crowned with golden shachi can't be entered today. Using prewar measured drawings and photographs, the city is preparing to rebuild it in wood.
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Okazaki, Aichi
岡崎城
This is the castle where Tokugawa Ieyasu was born, and the well said to have supplied his first bath still survives on the grounds.
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Shinshiro, Aichi
長篠城
Here 500 defenders held off a 15,000-strong Takeda army. The cliffs where two rivers meet and the main enclosure's great earthen rampart still remain.
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Iga, Mie
伊賀上野城
This castle has had three keeps: Tsutsui Sadatsugu's three-tiered one, Todo Takatora's five-tiered keep toppled by a storm just before completion, and a wooden keep built in the Showa era by a local politician with his own money.
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Matsusaka, Mie
松阪城
Built into the stone base of the keep are the lids of ancient stone coffins from burial mounds.
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Mishima, Shizuoka
山中城
Moats shaped from earth alone, without a single stone, form a grid pattern with Mount Fuji behind them on clear days.
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Shizuoka
駿府城
Under the lawn of a city park, excavators found two keep bases built by Tokugawa Ieyasu in two different eras, one on top of the other.
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Kakegawa, Shizuoka
掛川城
At the foot of a keep rebuilt in wood after 140 years stands an Edo-period palace that never left.
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Ena, Gifu
岩村城
On a 717-meter mountain, tiers of stone walls with no buildings left on them climb through the forest.
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Gifu, Gifu
岐阜城
The castle Oda Nobunaga used as his base for unifying Japan was an entire mountain.
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Kyoto
二条城
Built in the year the Tokugawa shogunate began, it still has the hall where the shogun announced he would give power back.
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Osaka
大阪城
Under the stone walls you see today, Hideyoshi's original Osaka Castle lies buried.
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Chihayaakasaka, Osaka
千早城
The mountain fort on Mt. Kongo where Kusunoki Masashige held out with a small force and was never taken by the Kamakura shogunate's huge army.
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Nagahama, Shiga
小谷城
The mountaintop castle where Azai Nagamasa lived with Oichi and their three daughters, and where he took his own life when Nobunaga attacked.
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Hikone, Shiga
彦根城
A castle of reuse: its National Treasure keep is said to have come from Otsu Castle, and other buildings and even wall stones from other castles.
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Ōmihachiman, Shiga
安土城
Nobunaga's seven-story tenshu burned only about three years after it was finished; on the summit, just its foundation stones remain in neat rows.
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Ōmihachiman, Shiga
観音寺城
On the mountain next to Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle stood a huge hilltop castle that was walled in stone before Azuchi was even built.
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Asago, Hyogo
竹田城
On clear late-autumn mornings, only the stone walls on the summit rise above a sea of clouds.
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Tamba-Sasayama, Hyogo
篠山城
The keep base was built, but a keep never stood on it.
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Akashi, Hyogo
明石城
From the station platform you can see two three-story turrets standing at either end of a long stone wall.
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Himeji, Hyogo
姫路城
A 400-year-old main keep and its three smaller keeps still stand linked by covered corridors, never burned by battle or by bombing.
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Akō, Hyogo
赤穂城
In the main enclosure, the floor plan of the palace where Oishi Kuranosuke and the Ako retainers of the Chushingura story gathered is laid out on the ground.
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Takatori, Nara
高取城
On a 583-meter mountaintop once stood a keep and 27 white turrets, so bright from the town below that a folk song mistook them for snow.
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Wakayama, Wakayama
和歌山城
A covered bridge with a roof and walls crosses the moat at a slant, built so the lord and the women of his household could pass unseen.
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Tottori, Tottori
鳥取城
At the foot of a stone wall bulges a second wall with no corners at all: the Maki-ishigaki, which Tottori City says is the only rounded wall of its kind at any castle in Japan.
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Matsue, Shimane
松江城
Two prayer tablets dated "first month of Keicho 16" (early 1611) turned up, and that discovery helped make this keep a National Treasure.
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Yasugi, Shimane
月山富田城
From the lord's mid-slope palace to the summit runs a single steep switchback, Nanamagari, climbed under fire from above: the defenses of the Amago clan's impregnable mountain castle.
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Tsuwano, Shimane
津和野城
On autumn and winter mornings, the red-tiled castle town sinks under fog while the high stone walls on the mountaintop float above it.
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Tsuyama, Okayama
津山城
Only one turret stands today, yet the three tiers of stone walls wrapping an entire hill still show how big this castle was.
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Takahashi, Okayama
備中松山城
Of the 12 original Edo-period keeps left in Japan, this is the only one that stands on a mountaintop.
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Sōja, Okayama
鬼ノ城
No keep and no feudal lord: just 2.8 km of earthen wall ringing a mountaintop, built over 1,300 years ago.
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Okayama
岡山城
Look at the foot of the black keep and you'll see its base is not square but a lopsided pentagon.
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Fukuyama, Hiroshima
福山城
Walk around to the north side, and the white keep turns into a wall of black iron.
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Akitakata, Hiroshima
郡山城
Mori Motonari turned an entire mountain into a castle, and ruled from its summit until the day he died.
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Hiroshima
広島城
The keep felled by the atomic bomb was rebuilt in concrete as a symbol of recovery. In 2026 that keep closed its doors, and the city is now studying a rebuild in wood.
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Iwakuni, Yamaguchi
岩国城
The keep on the hilltop was rebuilt about 50 m east of where the original stood, so that it could be seen from the town around Kintaikyo Bridge.
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Takamatsu, Kagawa
高松城
The moats hold 100% seawater: the water rises and falls with the tide, and sea bream swim in the inner moat.
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Marugame, Kagawa
丸亀城
A small original keep, about 15 m tall, is lifted high by tier upon tier of stone walls, walls that collapsed in 2018 and are still being rebuilt today.
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Tokushima, Tokushima
徳島城
Not a single original building survives, but walls of local blue-green stone, aoishi, still show the shape of the castle.
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Imabari, Ehime
今治城
Todo Takatora built this castle right on the shore, and its broad moat is still filled with seawater.
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Matsuyama, Ehime
湯築城
The park next to Dogo Onsen is the castle from which the Kono clan ruled Iyo for some 250 years. It had no stone walls and no keep, only earthen ramparts and a double ring of moats.
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Matsuyama, Ehime
松山城
The keep was finished the year after Perry's Black Ships arrived, and its roof tiles bear the hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa clan.
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Ōzu, Ehime
大洲城
Torn down in the Meiji era, the keep was rebuilt in wood in 2004, guided by old photographs and an Edo-period wooden model of its frame.
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Uwajima, Ehime
宇和島城
Both the Edo-period keep and an Edo-period wooden model of it, built at one-tenth scale, survive.
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Kōchi, Kochi
高知城
The lord's palace is still attached to the side of the keep, and the whole Edo-period main enclosure survives intact.
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Fukuoka
福岡城
The massive keep base still stands, yet whether a keep was ever built on top of it is still an open question.
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Ōnojō, Fukuoka
大野城
Built in 665 to defend the nation, it rings the ridges of Mount Shioji behind Dazaifu with about 8 km of earthen ramparts and stone walls.
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Karatsu, Saga
名護屋城
For just seven years, daimyo from all over Japan camped around this headland.
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Yoshinogari, Saga
吉野ヶ里
A farming village from some 2,000 years ago, with no stone walls and no keep, is one of Japan's 100 Fine Castles.
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Saga, Saga
佐賀城
The doors of its gate still carry bullet marks from a civil war fought in 1874.
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Hirado, Nagasaki
平戸城
Its lord burned his own castle just before it was finished, and it was rebuilt a century later.
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Shimabara, Nagasaki
島原城
A castle said to be far too grand for a minor lord held off the insurgents of the Shimabara Rebellion.
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Ōita, Oita
大分府内城
A seaside castle whose builder disliked the place name "Unloading" and renamed it "Raising Cargo".
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Taketa, Oita
岡城
Stone walls on a clifftop, without a single building left, are said to have inspired Taki Rentaro's song "Kojo no Tsuki" (The Moon over the Ruined Castle).
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Kumamoto
熊本城
From a walkway 6 meters above the ground, you look down on stone walls toppled by an earthquake and the repairs happening right now.
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Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto
人吉城
A castle held by a single family, the Sagara, from the Kamakura period all the way to the Meiji era.
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Nichinan, Miyazaki
飫肥城
A castle carved out of a volcanic-ash plateau, fought over by the Ito and Shimazu clans for 84 years.
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Kagoshima, Kagoshima
鹿児島城
The castle where the Shimazu, lords of a vast 770,000-koku domain, chose not to build a keep.
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Nakijin, Okinawa
今帰仁城
The walls of the Hokuzan kings snake along the ridge for 1.5 km. Long after the kings fell and the governors left, people kept coming here to pray.
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Nakagusuku, Okinawa
中城城
Stone walls that amazed Commodore Perry's expedition, and the one gusuku where you can compare all three Ryukyuan styles of stonework side by side.
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Naha, Okinawa
首里城
The royal palace has burned five times and been rebuilt every time. The main hall lost in 2019 reopens in its newest form on November 23, 2026.
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Hakodate, Hokkaido
志苔館
Right next to this earthwork fort, three huge jars packed with more than 380,000 coins were dug up. Overlooking the sea, it was an outpost of Japanese settlers who thrived on northern sea trade.
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Kaminokuni, Hokkaido
上ノ国勝山館
A fort on the Sea of Japan built by the founder of the Matsumae clan, where over 500 bone and antler tools of the kind used by the Ainu turned up among the finds, suggesting Japanese settlers and Ainu lived side by side.
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Aomori, Aomori
浪岡城
A castle at the northern tip of Honshu where a family said to descend from the noble Kitabatake clan kept up ties with Kyoto. Eight enclosures, split by double moats 20 m wide, fan out across the land.
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Ninohe, Iwate
九戸城
The last battlefield of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's campaign to unite Japan, with main-enclosure stone walls, raised after the castle fell, that are thought to be the oldest castle walls in the Tohoku region.
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Shiroishi, Miyagi
白石城
The castle of Katakura Kojuro, right-hand man to Date Masamune: allowed to survive as the Sendai domain's second castle after the one-castle-per-province rule, with its three-story turret rebuilt in wood and clay in 1995.
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Oga, Akita
脇本城
A Warring States castle made by reshaping an entire hill on the Oga Peninsula, where it juts into the Sea of Japan, out of earth alone. It covers about 150 hectares.
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Akita, Akita
秋田城
The northernmost of Japan's ancient frontier forts, where soil from a Nara-period flush toilet held clues that visitors from the Asian mainland once stayed here.
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Tsuruoka, Yamagata
鶴ヶ岡城
Every castle building was torn down, yet on the site of the main enclosure stands a shrine that local people built themselves out of devotion to their former lords, the Sakai family.
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Yonezawa, Yamagata
米沢城
The grounds of the shrine to Uesugi Kenshin are also the main enclosure of the castle where Date Masamune was born.
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Tsuchiura, Ibaraki
土浦城
Tsuchiura's main enclosure, ringed by moats, was said to look like a turtle floating on water, and it still has the only surviving main-enclosure gate tower in the Kanto region.
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