Kaneishi Castle

Overview

Kaneishi Castle (金石城, Kaneishi-jō) is a Japanese castle on the island of Tsushima, in the Izuhara neighbourhood of the city of Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture. It was founded in 1528, the first year of the Kyōroku era (享禄, Kyōroku), during the Muromachi period (1336–1573). Its ruins have been protected as a National Historic Site since 1995. The castle sits at coordinates 34.2041940, 129.2861110, on the island that fills the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula.

History

Kaneishi Castle was built in 1528, at the opening of the Kyōroku era. The date places its construction in the final century of the Muromachi period, when the Ashikaga shoguns in Kyoto held little real power and regional lords governed their own territories. Tsushima, lying in the sea between Japan and Korea, was one of those territories, and the castle was raised at Izuhara, its administrative centre.

The castle is recorded as the headquarters location of the Tsushima-Fuchū Domain (対馬府中藩, Tsushima-Fuchū-han), the domain that governed Tsushima. A domain of this kind was a hereditary territory administered by a lord, and the castle served as the seat from which that administration was conducted.

What Stands There Today

The site of Kaneishi Castle is preserved as a National Historic Site, a designation it has held since 1995. The castle is a ruin: the designation protects the earthworks and surviving traces of the fortification rather than a standing keep. The site lies within Izuhara, the central settlement of Tsushima.

The Name in Japanese

The castle's name is written 金石城. Its kana reading is かねいしじょう, and its romaji is Kaneishi-jō.

The name breaks down into three characters:

• 金 — read かね (kane) here. The character means "metal" or "gold". In this word it is read with the native Japanese reading rather than the Sino-Japanese kin.
• 石 — read いし (ishi) here. The character means "stone". Again the native Japanese reading is used, not the Sino-Japanese seki.
• 城 — read じょう (jō) here. The character means "castle". It is the standard suffix attached to the name of a Japanese castle, and it appears in the names of fortifications across the country.

Read together, 金石城 is Kaneishi-jō: "Kaneishi Castle". The first two characters, 金石, combine to mean "metal and stone" — a pairing used in Japanese for something hard and unyielding, and one that also appears in the four-character phrase 金石の交わり (kinseki no majiwari), "a bond hard as metal and stone". Whether the castle's name was chosen with that image in mind is not recorded here; what the characters plainly give is a name built from the words for metal and stone.

For learners, the name is a useful illustration of a common pattern in Japanese place and castle names: the final 城 is almost always read jō when it follows a place name, while the characters before it usually take native Japanese readings. Compare the many castles whose names end in -jō, and the reading of 城 as shiro when the word stands alone.

Visiting and Context

Kaneishi Castle belongs to the Muromachi period, the stretch of Japanese history from 1336 to 1573 that takes its name from the Muromachi district of Kyoto, where the Ashikaga shoguns established their government. A castle founded in 1528 sits near the end of that period, in the decades before the wars of unification that reshaped Japan's castles and domains.

Its location on Tsushima gives the site its wider context. The island lies in the Korea Strait, close to the Korean peninsula, and for centuries it was Japan's principal point of contact with the mainland. The Tsushima-Fuchū Domain, whose headquarters the castle was, governed that crossing point. A visitor to Izuhara is standing at the administrative heart of an island whose position between two countries shaped its history.

The site is a National Historic Site, so the visit is to protected ruins rather than to a reconstructed castle. The designation, in place since 1995, marks the earthworks and layout as historically significant. Izuhara, in the city of Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture, is the point from which to approach the site.