Hagi Castle 萩城

The castle on the delta

Hagi Castle is located on the Abu River Delta, at the western tip of Honshu Island. Surrounded by hills, the castle was built by the defeated Mori clan after the Battle of Sekigahara. Now in ruins, its moats and remains are still a pleasant place where locals come to walk.

The castle of a fallen clan

Hagi Castle (Yamaguchi Prefecture) was built by the Mori clan after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Indeed, Terumoto Mori, one of the most powerful daimyo in the country, took sides against Ieyasu Tokugawa and following a defeat, saw a large part of his land confiscated. Expelled from nearby Hiroshima, he moved further west, to Hagi. Unusually, the castle was built at the foot of Mount Shizuki and not higher up the mountain. After the Meiji revolution, in which the clan of Choshu was one of the great catalysts, the castle was dismantled as a result of the modernization policy introduced by the new central government.


A feudal town in the 21st century

Hagi is a town that has endured the wear and tear of time better than many other Japanese cities. The ruins of the castle can be visited in the north-east of the city, next to Shizuki Park, on a large flowered space where the Hananoe tea house and a temple were also built. The site is particularly popular for cherry blossom viewing in spring, including more than 600 of the precious midori-yoshino cherry tree.



Horiuchi, the samurai district in Hagi

Isoyan, Wikimedia

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