Hagi Castle ruins and Horiuchi district

photo by そらみみ · CC BY-SA 4.0

photo by Isoyan · CC BY-SA 3.0

The castle lasted 270 years: in 1874 it was dismantled by law, and only the walls and the moat remain.

Mōri Terumoto, who had lost almost all of his domain after the defeat at Sekigahara in 1600, built the Mōri clan's new castle here between 1604 and 1608, at the tip of the peninsula where the Hashimoto River meets the sea. It was the seat of the lords of Chōshū until, in 1863, the domain government moved to Yamaguchi; in 1874, with the Meiji castle abolition edict (廃城令), the structure was dismantled almost entirely. The stone walls, the moat and the base of the tower remain, today in Shizuki Park; around them, the Horiuchi district preserves the streets and plastered walls of the samurai residences, among summer mikan trees planted after 1863 on the land left empty by the samurai who had moved elsewhere.

The castle ruins have been a national Historic Site since 1951; the Horiuchi district, a samurai quarter (武家町), has been an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings since 4 September 1976, one of the four protected districts of the city of Hagi (the others: Hiyako, Hamasaki and Sasanami-ichi). In 2015 the whole area became part, as the component ‘萩城下町’, of the UNESCO Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution.

ℹ️ The Horiuchi district is made up of public streets, which you can walk at any time. Shizuki Park with the castle ruins has paid entry with its own hours, to be checked with each site (official source not reached: the hagijo.jp domain does not resolve).

🚉 萩港 · 26 min walk

Sources: ja.wikipedia.org · ja.wikipedia.org · ja.wikipedia.org · ja.wikipedia.org

All series · Open the map