Yatsushiro Castle

Overview

Yatsushiro Castle (八代城, Yatsushiro-jō) is a ruined castle in the city of Yatsushiro, in Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. It was built in 1622, during the Edo period (1603 – 1868), in the eighth year of the Genna era (元和, Genna, 1615 – 1624). The castle is counted among the Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles, a list drawn up in 2017.

The site sits at coordinates 32.5074560, 130.5998920, near the coast of the Yatsushiro Sea. Nothing of the original keep survives. What remains are water moats and sections of stone wall, and in 2014 the site was registered as a National Historic Site as part of the Remains of Yatsushiro Castles, a designation that covers both Furufumoto Castle and Mugishima Castle alongside Yatsushiro Castle itself.

History

The castle owes its existence to an earthquake. In 1619, Mugishima Castle collapsed in a large quake. Katō Tadahiro (加藤忠広), the son of the famous daimyo Katō Kiyomasa (加藤清正), responded by ordering his vassal Katō Masataka (加藤正高) to build a new castle. Construction was completed in 1622, the year the Genna era reached its eighth year.

The Katō hold on the region did not last. In 1632, by order of the Tokugawa shogunate, Hosokawa Tadaoki (細川忠興) entered the castle. Tadaoki had already transferred the headship of his house to his son and now settled at Yatsushiro for his retirement, living in the kitanomaru (北の丸), the northern compound of the castle grounds. The Hosokawa domain, based at Kumamoto, retained Yatsushiro as an important secondary stronghold through the rest of the Edo period.

What Stands There Today

The castle survives only as ruins. The buildings are gone; the water moats and stretches of stone wall are what remain of the original structure. The masonry shows the technique of the period, with large fitted stones forming the base of what were once walls and towers.

In 2014 the site was registered as a National Historic Site under the collective name Remains of Yatsushiro Castles, a designation that draws together three related sites: Furufumoto Castle, Mugishima Castle, and Yatsushiro Castle. The grouping recognises that the three forts succeeded one another in the same area, with each new castle replacing one that had been lost. In 2017 Yatsushiro Castle was listed among the Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles.

The Name in Japanese

The castle's name in Japanese is 八代城. It is read in kana as やつしろじょう, and in romaji as Yatsushiro-jō.

Breaking the name down character by character:

• 八 — read here as yatsu. The character means "eight". On its own it is normally read hachi, but in this place name it takes the kun reading yatsu.
• 代 — read here as shiro. The character means "generation", "age", or "substitute". In this compound it follows 八 to form the place name Yatsushiro; the combination 八代 is an old way of writing the district's name, and the reading shiro is specific to this use.
• 城 — read here as jō. The character means "castle". It appears at the end of a great many Japanese castle names, and when it follows a place name it is normally read jō in the on reading. The same character can also be read shiro on its own, which is the everyday Japanese word for a castle.

So the whole name means, plainly, "Yatsushiro Castle" — the castle of the Yatsushiro district. The reading jō rather than shiro is the standard convention for formal castle names, and it is the reading used in the official name of the site.

For learners, the useful pattern is this: a place name plus 城, read jō, gives you the name of a castle. Once the pattern is recognised, names such as 熊本城 (Kumamoto-jō) and 大阪城 (Ōsaka-jō) become immediately readable.

Visiting and Context

Yatsushiro is a city in southern Kumamoto Prefecture, and the castle site lies within it. The ruins are open ground, with the moats and stone walls visible to visitors; there is no reconstructed keep to climb. The site is a National Historic Site, and it forms part of the wider group of Remains of Yatsushiro Castles that also takes in Furufumoto Castle and Mugishima Castle.

The castle's place in the Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles, awarded in 2017, reflects its standing among the country's historic castle sites even in its ruined state. For anyone studying Japanese, the name is a compact lesson in how castle names are built and read, and the site itself is a record of how earthquakes, domain politics, and the Tokugawa order shaped the fortifications of Kyushu in the early Edo period.