Honjō Castle

Overview

Honjō Castle (本荘城, Honjō-jō) is a Japanese castle in Yurihonjō, a city in the south of Akita Prefecture, in the far north of Japan's main island of Honshu. It dates from 1610, in the fifteenth year of the Keichō era (慶長, keichō), early in the Edo period (1603–1868) — the long stretch of peace in which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled from Edo, the city now called Tokyo, and some two hundred and sixty regional lords governed their domains under shogunal supervision.

The castle was the seat of Honjō Domain (本荘藩, Honjō-han), and in the closing decades of the Edo period it was home to the Rokugō clan (六郷氏, Rokugō-shi), the daimyō — the hereditary lords — of that domain. It was also known by two alternative names: Tsurumai-jō (鶴舞城, tsurumai-jō, "crane-dance castle") and Ozaki-jō (尾崎城, ozaki-jō). The site lies at roughly 39.38° north, 140.05° east, in the coastal plain of southern Akita.

History

Honjō Castle was established in 1610, the fifteenth year of Keichō, placing its foundation in the first decade of Tokugawa rule, when the new shogunate was consolidating the framework of domains and castle regulations that would structure Japanese politics for the next two and a half centuries. The castle served as the administrative and military headquarters of Honjō Domain, the local government through which the surrounding territory was taxed and governed.

At the end of the Edo period, the castle was in the hands of the Rokugō clan, the daimyō family of Honjō Domain. The Rokugō were therefore the lords of the castle in the years when the Tokugawa order collapsed and Japan was drawn into the political upheavals that preceded the Meiji Restoration of 1868 — the moment when the shogunate was abolished and the domains were soon after replaced by prefectures.

What Stands There Today

The castle's later history is bound up with the fate of Honjō Domain itself. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan's domains were dissolved and reconstituted as prefectures, and the country's castles — no longer needed as the fortified seats of hereditary lords — were in many cases dismantled, with their grounds turned over to public use. Honjō Castle is remembered today chiefly through its site and its name, which survives in the place-name Honjō in Yurihonjō, the city that administers the area.

The Name in Japanese

The castle's name is written 本荘城 and read ほんじょうじょう (Honjō-jō). It breaks down into three kanji:

• 本 — read hon in this word. Its core meaning is "book", but in place names and compounds it usually means "main", "original", "base" or "this". Here it carries the sense of "main" or "base".
• 荘 — read jō in this word. It means a manor or country estate — historically, a landed property held as a private estate, often a tax-exempt holding in the medieval period. The compound 本荘 (honjō) therefore suggests a principal manor or main estate, a common origin for Japanese place names.
• 城 — read jō in this word. It means "castle". On its own the character is also read shiro, and it appears in the names of castles all over Japan.

The full name is therefore 本荘城, Honjō-jō — literally "Honjō Castle", with the place name Honjō followed by the character for castle. Note that the final -jō of the reading is the same character 城, so the name contains the word for castle twice over: once as part of the place name and once as the suffix.

The castle's alternative names work the same way. Tsurumai-jō (鶴舞城) combines 鶴 (tsuru, "crane") and 舞 (mai, "dance") with 城 — "crane-dance castle", a poetic name of the kind often attached to Japanese castles. Ozaki-jō (尾崎城) is built from 尾 (o, "tail"), 崎 (zaki, "cape" or "promontory") and 城.

Visiting and Context

Honjō Castle belongs to the geography of the Edo-period domains of the Tōhoku region, the northern part of Honshu. Its position in southern Akita places it within the historic province of Dewa, the large northern province that was divided in the Meiji period into the modern prefectures of Akita and Yamagata. Yurihonjō, the city that now contains the site, lies on the coast of the Sea of Japan, and the castle's coordinates — 39.38° north, 140.05° east — place it in the city's central area.

For readers of Japanese, the castle is a useful case study in how Japanese place names and castle names are constructed. The pattern is consistent across the country: a place name, often two kanji with a manor or estate origin, followed by 城. Learning to recognise 城 as a suffix — read jō in compounds and shiro on its own — unlocks the names of castles throughout Japan, from the great surviving fortresses to the many, like Honjō, that survive chiefly as place names and local memory.