Shiroishi Castle (白石城) 白石城
Rebuilt in 1995 entirely in wood, not in concrete like almost all Japanese towers.
In 1602 Katakura Kojūrō Kagetsuna, the right-hand man of Date Masamune, settled here, and the Katakura stayed for eleven generations, more than 260 years, until the end of samurai rule; before that the castle had passed through the hands of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and then of Masamune himself, after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. When in 1615 the ‘one domain, one castle’ law ordered the secondary fortresses to be pulled down, the Sendai domain obtained an exception and kept two: Sendai and Shiroishi. The three-storey tower you see today reproduces the one that Katakura Munekage had rebuilt in 1823, after the fire of 1819; the original was demolished in 1874, when the new Meiji government dismantled the castles of the domains that had opposed it, and for a hundred and twenty years a park stood in its place. The reconstruction, in wood and with the old techniques, began in 1992 and was finished in March 1995: 16.7 metres high from the top edge of the stone wall, nine bays by six at the base and five by three at the top, it is among the largest wooden towers rebuilt in post-war Japan.
Miyagi
Shiroishi
