Aizu-Wakamatsu is the most powerful and at the same time the oldest castle in the Tōhoku region in the north of Honshu Island. Its history begins in the 14th century and is closely connected with the Ashina clan, whose members claimed descent from the legendary Taira family.
At the beginning of the 12th century, the Aizu region in Mutsu Province was ruled by Sawara Yoshitsuru, and his grandson adopted the surname Ashina, founding a new clan. In 1333, Ashina Naomori built his residence in Wakamatsu, which in 1384 was rebuilt into a full-scale castle and given the name Kurokawa. For many centuries, until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, it remained the main military and administrative center of the Aizu region.
In 1553, the castle and the region passed into the hands of Ashina Moriuji, who inherited them after the death of his father, Ashina Morikiyo. Moriuji significantly expanded the influence of the Ashina clan by taking lands from the Uesugi and Satake clans. These successes led to conflict with the Date clan, despite the former alliance between them. Contemporaries remembered Moriuji as a wise and just ruler under whom the region experienced economic prosperity. His reign is considered the golden age of the Ashina clan. In 1561, he withdrew from active rule to devote himself to the arts and handed power over to his son, Ashina Morioki.
Ashina Morioki proved to be an incapable ruler and died of alcoholism at the age of twenty-seven. After him, power passed to his adopted son, Ashina Moritaka, but because of his origins he lacked the support of the clan’s long-standing vassals and was soon killed as a result of a conspiracy. The new leader chosen was Ashina Morishige, Moritaka’s son-in-law and the son of the powerful daimyō Satake Yoshishige. His appointment also caused discontent, and many vassals defected to the young and charismatic Date Masamune. In 1585, the Ashina clan joined an alliance against Masamune led by the Hatakeyama clan. The combined army of thirty thousand men invaded Date territory.
Masamune attempted to stop the enemy with only seven thousand warriors but was defeated at the Battle of the Hitadori Bridge and retreated to Motomiya Castle. The allies prepared to storm the castle but received news that the Satake lands were under attack by the Satomi clan. After the Satake forces withdrew, the alliance collapsed and the siege was abandoned. In 1589, Masamune went on the offensive, invaded Aizu, captured Kurokawa Castle with relative ease, and completely destroyed the Ashina clan at the Battle of Suriagehara.
In 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi began his campaign against the Hōjō clan and invited Date Masamune to join him. Masamune was unable to do so in time and feared Hideyoshi’s wrath, so he appeared before him dressed in white garments symbolizing readiness to accept death. Hideyoshi appreciated the gesture and did not punish him, but Kurokawa Castle was confiscated and granted to Hideyoshi’s vassal, Gamō Ujisato. By 1592, Ujisato carried out a major reconstruction, building a seven-story tenshu keep, adding the Ninomaru and Sannomaru baileys, and renaming the castle Tsurugajō, or “Crane Castle.” Nevertheless, the new name did not take hold, and the castle came to be known as Aizu-Wakamatsu.
Gamō Ujisato was known not only as a military commander but also as a master of the tea ceremony and a patron of Sen no Rikyū. After Rikyū was forced to commit ritual suicide and his property was confiscated, Ujisato took in his adopted son, Sen Shōan, and brought him to Aizu-Wakamatsu. On the castle grounds, Shōan built the Rinkaku teahouse, which has survived to this day.
After Ujisato’s death in 1595, the castle was inherited by his son, Gamō Hideyuki, but he was soon transferred by Hideyoshi’s order to another domain with a sharp reduction in income. Aizu-Wakamatsu then passed to Uesugi Kagekatsu, the nephew and adopted son of Uesugi Kenshin. Kagekatsu took part in Hideyoshi’s campaigns and, after his death, became a member of the regency council. In 1600, he supported the Western Coalition and was defeated during the Sekigahara campaign, after which he lost a significant portion of his lands.
In 1611, the castle was damaged by an earthquake, and its restoration was completed under Katō Akinari in 1639. The keep became five stories tall, and this appearance later served as the basis for the modern reconstruction. In 1643, the castle was transferred to Hoshina Masayuki, the illegitimate son of the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada. His descendants, who bore the Matsudaira name, ruled Aizu-Wakamatsu for nearly 230 years, until the beginning of the Meiji period.
In 1852, the Aizu domain came under the rule of Matsudaira Katamori. In 1862, he was appointed military commissioner of Kyoto and formed the Rōshigumi unit, from which the famous Shinsengumi later emerged. After the transfer of power to the emperor in 1867 and the coup of 1868, the Boshin Civil War began. Katamori remained loyal to the shogunate and continued resistance in Aizu-Wakamatsu. As part of the Northern Alliance, the northern domains attempted to oppose the imperial forces but suffered defeat after defeat due to the lack of unified command.
In the fall of 1868, imperial troops broke through the defenses at the Bonari Pass and surrounded Aizu-Wakamatsu. The garrison numbered about five thousand men against an opposing army of fifteen thousand. After several failed assaults, a prolonged siege began. It was during this siege that the tragedy of the Byakkotai unit occurred, when nineteen young samurai committed seppuku, mistakenly believing that the castle had fallen.
On November 6, 1868, the garrison capitulated. The castle was severely damaged and was completely dismantled in 1874. During the demolition, monks from Amidadji Temple saved and relocated the three-story Gosangai turret. By the mid-20th century, only the moats, stone walls, and foundations of some structures remained on the castle grounds. In 1965, the main tenshu keep was reconstructed and converted into a museum. In subsequent years, the Kurogane Gate, galleries, and towers were rebuilt, and in 2011 the keep underwent renovation, during which the roof tiles were replaced with red ones.
Today, Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle Park is considered one of the best places to view cherry blossoms. Since 1934, the castle complex has held the status of a National Historic Site, and in 2006 it was included in the list of the “100 Outstanding Castles of Japan.”
See also
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Kaminoyama Castle
Kamino-yama Castle stood at the center of an important logistics hub, in the middle of the Yonezawa Plain, which served as the gateway to the western part of the Tohoku region. Roads connecting the Aizu, Fukushima, and Yamagata areas intersected here.
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Imabari Castle
Tōdō Takatora (1556–1630) served at different times as a vassal of several famous clans—Azai, Oda, Toyotomi, and Tokugawa. He took part in the Battle of Anegawa (1570), the Battle of Shizugatake (1583), the invasions of Kyushu and Korea, the Sekigahara campaign (1600), and the Siege of Osaka (1614–1615).
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Iwakuni Castle
Kikkawa Hiroie (1561–1625) was the grandson of the famous daimyo Mori Motonari and a vassal of the Mori clan. Under Mori Terumoto, he fought in both Korean campaigns and took part in the defense of Ulsan Castle. During the Battle of Sekigahara, Hiroie stood with his 3,000-man force on the side of the Western Coalition; however, even before the battle began, he sent Tokugawa Ieyasu a secret message stating that he did not intend to fight Tokugawa’s troops. As a result of his inaction, 15,000 soldiers under Mori Hidemoto were also unable to enter the battle, since Hiroie blocked their path.
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Gujo Hachiman Castle
Gujo Hachiman Castle is located on 350-meter Mount Hachiman, near the confluence of the Yoshidagawa and Kodaragava rivers, and not far from the Nagaragawa River. During the Sengoku period, this area was of great strategic importance: it stood at a key crossroads of routes connecting Mino Province in the south with the Sea of Japan in the north, and Hida Province in the east with Echizen Province in the west.
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Amagasaki Castle
The founding year of Amagasaki Castle is traditionally considered to be 1617, when Toda Ujikané built his castle here, making it the administrative center of the Amagasaki Domain. However, as early as the Sengoku period, a fortress built by the Hosokawa clan already stood on this site. After the fall of Itami Castle in 1579, Araki Murashige—formerly a vassal of Oda Nobunaga who had rebelled against him—fled to this earlier castle.
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Hiroshima Castle
Mōri Terumoto (1553–1625) was the grandson and rightful heir of the renowned Mōri Motonari. When Terumoto became the head of the Mōri clan in 1571, he inherited vast territories covering a large part of the San’in and San’yō regions in western Honshū. In addition, the Mōri clan possessed the largest and most technologically advanced naval fleet of its time.
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Fukuyama Castle
After the defeat of Toyotomi Hideyori’s supporters in the Osaka Campaigns of 1614–1615, many clans in Japan still remained not fully loyal to the Tokugawa shogunate, especially in the western Chūgoku region. Mizuno Katsunari (1564–1651), a cousin of Tokugawa Ieyasu, became the first of the Tokugawa house’s close retainers, the so-called fudai daimyō, to be relocated to this strategically important area.
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Tiba Castle
The founder of the Chiba clan is considered to be Chiba Tsunesige (1083–1180), who in 1126 moved his residence to the Inohana area and built a strongly fortified stronghold there. Although Tsunesige himself came from the Taira clan, the Chiba clan later supported Minamoto no Yoritomo, the future founder of the first shogunate.
