Hachioji Castle Ruins from Tachikawa: History Walk and Silk Town Guide

Tachikawa’s samurai served the lord of Hachioji Castle, which fell in a day. Walk its ruins and Venetian glass, then Soto, the silk town it grew into.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

There was once a family of samurai who carried the name Tachikawa (立川) on their backs: the Tachikawa clan, who ruled the area in the Middle Ages. For a long time I did not know whom they served at the end of the age of civil war. The answer is written in a single line in a guide published by the Tachikawa City Museum of History and Folklore. In this period, it says, the Tachikawa clan were under Hojo Ujiteru of Hachioji.

Hojo Ujiteru’s castle stood in the mountains north of Takao. It was called Hachioji Castle. On 23 June 1590, it was attacked by the armies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord then completing the unification of Japan, and fell, in the words of Hachioji City, “in just one day.” That fall proved decisive: Odawara Castle surrendered, and the Hojo clan was destroyed. The Tachikawa clan shared their masters’ fate.

I wanted to walk the ruins of that castle. But once I began to read, the story did not end with the castle. The name of the castle’s mountain had become the name of the city of Hachioji. The market opened at the foot of the castle came down the mountain and became a post town, then a weaving town, and eventually the only place in Japan to be called “the capital of mulberries.” And just to the east of that mulberry capital, the villages of Tachikawa were growing mulberry seedlings. How did a single mountain castle give birth to a whole city? I head west from Tachikawa on the Chuo Line.

The way in to Hachioji Castle ruins: the mountain castle of the lord Tachikawa’s samurai served

Hachioji Castle (八王子城, Hachioji-jo) was a mountain castle built by Hojo Ujiteru, the third son of Ujiyasu, third head of the Hojo clan based in Odawara. According to Hachioji City, it is not clear exactly when it was built, but construction began in the Tensho era, and the leading theory is that Ujiteru moved there from Takiyama Castle between 1584 and 1587. A pamphlet by the city’s cultural properties section says construction began around 1582.

The size of the castle is easiest to grasp in numbers. According to the Hachioji Castle Ruins Guidance Facility, the area designated as a National Historic Site covers about 159 hectares. Hachioji City’s local history series “Hachioji Monogatari” says it was one of the largest satellite castles of the Odawara Hojo. The Japan Heritage application documents put it more bluntly: “the largest satellite castle of the Odawara Hojo.”

Why did Ujiteru leave Takiyama Castle, where he had long lived, and move up a mountain? Hachioji City sees the biggest reason as preparation against Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was subduing by force any lord who would not submit to his drive to unify the country. Ujiteru was the Hojo clan’s foremost general and also well informed. If it came to war with Hideyoshi, it would end in a siege at the main castle in Odawara. That being so, the satellite castles had to be defensible with as few men as possible. Rather than Takiyama Castle, with its long defensive lines needing many defenders, he probably chose Hachioji, a mountain castle with steep differences in height that was hard to attack, the city writes. The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Japan Heritage page gives another reason: it was a place from which, treating Mount Takao opposite as a natural fortress, he could control the pass road from Kai province (today’s Yamanashi) into Hachioji. The “Fuji Barrier” that Ujiteru set up to watch that pass road was succeeded in the Edo period by the Kobotoke Barrier, said to be the most formidable checkpoint on the Koshu Dochu highway.

The castle was divided into three main parts, Hachioji City explains: the “Negoya area,” which was the castle town; the “residence area,” including the Goshuden site where the lord Ujiteru’s mansion stood; and the “fortress area,” which became a stronghold in times of war. The fortress area made skilful use of the terrain of Mount Fukasawa, today’s Shiroyama (“castle mountain”), with the inner keep (honmaru) at the summit and flat terraces called kuruwa arranged around it. Because it preserves the form of a mountain castle of the age of civil war so well, it was chosen in April 2006 as one of the Japan Castle Foundation’s “100 Fine Castles of Japan.”

That mountain castle is linked to Tachikawa’s history by a slender thread. According to the Tachikawa museum’s guide, “The Medieval Tachikawa Clan and the Tachikawa Documents,” the Tachikawa clan were warriors descended from the Hinomatsuri clan of the Nishi-to, one of the Seven Bands of Musashi (a medieval network of warrior families), and are thought to have settled in what is now Tachikawa from around the end of the Heian period, in the 12th century. In the Kamakura period they served the shogunate as its retainers. From the period of the Northern and Southern Courts into the Muromachi period, records are scarce and much is unknown. Then, at the end of the age of civil war, in 1586, a Buddhist image for Hachiman Shrine said to have been commissioned by Onene, a woman of the household of Tachikawa Terushige, was handed down at Suwa Shrine in the Shibasaki district. In this period, the Tachikawa clan were under Hojo Ujiteru of Hachioji.

1586 falls in the years when Ujiteru was moving his residence to Hachioji Castle. Just as a woman of a Tachikawa samurai house was dedicating a Buddhist image to rebuild a Hachiman shrine burned in a wildfire, up on the mountain to the west her lord’s new castle was ringing with the sounds of construction. The Tachikawa clan and Shibasaki’s Hachiman shrine also appear in this series’ walks “Fusai-ji Temple and Suwa Shrine” and “Tachikawa’s Old Villages.”

But why was the castle’s mountain called “Hachioji” in the first place?

The city’s name, Hachioji, was born on the castle mountain

Hachioji City’s official website explains the origin of the city’s name in detail. The place name Hachioji, “Eight Princes,” arose all over Japan with the spread of the worship of Gozu Tenno, the ox-headed heavenly king, and his eight princes (hachi-oji). The origin of our Hachioji, the city writes, is the Hachioji Shrine that now stands on the site of Hachioji Castle.

Its founding legend is quite a tale of the supernatural. In the autumn of 913, a scholar-monk named Myogyo, who had come from Kyoto, began ascetic practice in a rock cave at the summit of Mount Fukasawa. As the night deepened, a strong wind blew, thunder roared, and monsters appeared in swarms. Next a great serpent came down, coiled itself around Myogyo and went to sleep. When Myogyo struck it on the head with his priest’s staff and said “Wake up!”, the serpent vanished. At dawn a god appeared with eight young boys and announced that he was Gozu Tenno and that those with him were the eight princes. In 916 Myogyo named Mount Fukasawa “Tenno Peak” and the eight surrounding peaks “Eight Princes Peaks,” and enshrined Gozu Tenno and the eight princes. This is said to be the beginning of the Hachioji faith.

A monk waking up a giant serpent by hitting it on the head with a stick. Read on a city hall’s official website, it has a peculiar charm.

It is not clear when the area around Hachioji Shrine began to be called “Hachioji.” According to Hachioji City, the oldest known instance so far is a letter from Hojo Ujiyasu dated 8 May 1569, which uses the phrase “Hachioji-suji,” meaning “the Hachioji direction.” On receiving word that Takeda Shingen’s army would invade “in the Hachioji direction,” Ujiyasu ordered his retainers to move to Takiyama Castle and take up position at “Yui no Yokaichi.” Here another important word appears: Yokaichi, “the eighth-day market.” The name of this market would later become the centre of the town of Hachioji. Please remember it.

Then, some time after 1582, Ujiteru built a new castle on Mount Fukasawa, where Hachioji Gongen was worshipped, and made Hachioji Gongen the castle’s guardian deity. That, the city writes, is why the castle came to be called Hachioji Castle. The name of the mountain’s god became the name of the castle, and the name of the castle later became the name of the city. The origin of Tachikawa’s place name is so wrapped in mystery that the city itself admits “none of the theories is conclusive.” Hachioji’s name, by contrast, was born quite clearly on top of a single mountain. To think that the next city’s godparent is a small shrine on a mountain top makes me a little envious.

The Goshuden site, and Venetian lace glass found nowhere else in Japan

At the foot of the Hachioji Castle ruins is the Guidance Facility. Its exterior is an octagon, designed to evoke the character 八 (“eight”) in Hachioji. It sounds like a pun, but that really is what it says. The proper route is to take in the castle’s history and overall layout here, then go on past the management building.

Walk along the Shiroyama River, cross a wooden bridge, and you reach the Goshuden site, where Ujiteru’s residence stood. The bridge is called the Hikibashi. According to Hachioji City, it was a bridge designed to be destroyed or otherwise made impassable if enemies attacked. The koguchi beyond it, the entrance to the terrace, was restored as faithfully as possible, reusing the original stone walls and paving as much as they could. The work was done in 1990, marking 400 years since the castle fell.

Why did the remains survive so well? According to Hachioji City, in the Edo period the land around Hachioji Castle was directly controlled by the Tokugawa shogunate, and from the Meiji era it became national forest, so people seldom disturbed it. The castle’s time stopped on the day it fell, and lay sleeping under the forest.

Excavations at the Goshuden found the remains of two large buildings and of a garden with a pond, the city’s pamphlet says. The buildings are thought to have been the main hall where Ujiteru conducted government business and a kaisho, a hall for entertaining guests. More than 70,000 artefacts were found. After six years of piecing them together, they came to 2,436 individual objects. Seventy thousand fragments, six years, 2,436 objects: a mind-boggling task, and probably one of the hardest jigsaw puzzles in the world.

Among them, one find stands out: vessels of lace glass made in Venice. In Japan, the city writes, such glass has been excavated only at Hachioji Castle, which makes it extremely valuable. The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Japan Heritage page also notes that many imported goods and tea utensils were unearthed, starting with the Venetian lace glass, and that they convey the cultural and artistic refinement of a warlord of the age of civil war.

The same page has stories about Ujiteru’s character. He was a master of the transverse flute, loved the shishimai lion dances performed in his domain to pray for good harvests, and is said to have held moonlit banquets with his retainers. There are nine three-lion dances in Hachioji City, and one of them, the Hasama lion dance, is said to have begun when Ujiteru gave the villagers lion heads. Perhaps the great general who stood up to both the Takeda and the Uesugi played his flute in his mountain mansion with Italian glass in front of him.

The Edo-period Soto Nikki (“Diary of the Mulberry Capital”) records the “Eight Views of Hachioji,” scenic spots in the castle town that Ujiteru is said to have chosen and written poems about. One of them, “Autumn Moon over Hachioji Castle,” describes the autumn moon seen from Shiroyama lighting up the whole domain, the Agency for Cultural Affairs page says. Somewhere within reach of that moonlight were the villages of Tachikawa.

Hachioji Castle and Soto in numbers

• 159 — the designated area of the Hachioji Castle Ruins National Historic Site, in hectares. Too big to count in tennis courts; I gave up.
• 1 — the number of days between the Toyotomi attack on 23 June 1590 and the castle’s fall (according to Hachioji City).
• 70,000 → 2,436 — the number of artefacts found at the Goshuden, and the number of objects after six years of piecing them together.
• 916 — the year Myogyo is said to have enshrined Gozu Tenno and the eight princes on Mount Fukasawa. The beginning of the city’s name.
• 4 and 8 — the days of the month on which markets were held in the fifteen post stations of Edo-period Hachioji. Striped cloth gathered there.
• 1 — the number of towns in Japan called Soto, “the mulberry capital.” According to Hachioji City, that is Hachioji alone.

A detour quiz

What imported item, found at the Goshuden site of Hachioji Castle, has been excavated nowhere else in Japan?

1. Venetian lace glass vessels　(B) A Dutch telescope　(C) A Portuguese clock

The answer is on the last page of this article.

23 June 1590: the castle that fell in a single day, and the Goshuden waterfall

In 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi attacked the Hojo of Odawara. According to Hachioji City, on 23 June Hachioji Castle was attacked by the armies of Maeda Toshiie and Uesugi Kagekatsu and fell. The castle’s lord, Ujiteru, was not in Hachioji; he was inside the besieged main castle at Odawara.

The castle was defended by Ujiteru’s retainers. The city’s pamphlet records the names of the defenders terrace by terrace. The inner keep at the summit is said to have been held by Yokochi Kenmotsu Yoshinobu. Nakayama Kageyu Ienori and others held the area around the Matsuki terrace and fought hard, but were hopelessly outnumbered. The Komiya terrace was held by Kano Ichian, but was attacked by the Uesugi army, and its fall triggered the breaching of the summit terraces one after another, the city writes.

A story survives about Nakayama Ienori. Maeda Toshiie, on the attacking side, is said to have regretted the loss of so brave a warrior and offered to spare his life. Afterwards, Ienori’s surviving son served Tokugawa Ieyasu and became a senior retainer assigned to the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, the city’s pamphlet says. The castle fell in a day, but the defenders’ families survived into the new age.

Deep in the Goshuden grounds is a small waterfall, the Goshuden Falls. The city’s pamphlet says that when the castle fell, Hojo commanders, women and children who were at the Goshuden took their own lives upstream of the falls and threw themselves in one after another, and it is said the waters of the Shiroyama River ran red with their blood for three days and three nights. Today it is a quiet waterfall surrounded by trees, and only the sound of the water can be heard. Here I will make no jokes.

Hachioji City writes that the fall of Hachioji Castle was decisive: Odawara Castle, which had held out under siege, surrendered, and the Hojo clan was destroyed. After the surrender, Ujiteru and his elder brother Ujimasa committed ritual suicide in the town below the castle. Takaosan Yakuo-in’s history records that Ujiteru took his own life with his brother on the 11th of the seventh month, at the age of 51.

When their masters were destroyed, the Tachikawa clan too met that fate. The Tachikawa City guide’s account ends there; it does not say what became of the family afterwards. The story of the samurai who ruled Tachikawa reached a turning point on a single summer day, on a mountain to the west.

So what became of the town at the foot of the castle, its lord gone? The town did not vanish. It came down the mountain.