Hirosaki Castle and the Tsugaru Castle Town

Hirosaki Castle, completed in 1611 (Keichō 16), was the seat of the Tsugaru family, who ruled the Tsugaru domain, also called the Hirosaki domain. Around it grew a castle town that, according to Aomori Prefecture, flourished as the political, economic, and cultural center of the Tsugaru region.

Today the castle grounds form Hirosaki Park, and parts of the old town plan can still be traced. This article follows how the Tsugaru family rose to power, how the castle and town were built, and what survives of them.

The rise of the Tsugaru family

In the late sixteenth century, the Tsugaru region was contested ground. According to Aomori Prefecture's historical chronology, a warrior then known as Ōura Tamenobu became lord of Ōura Castle in 1567. In 1578 he overthrew Kitabatake Akimura, the lord of Namioka Castle.

The prefecture describes Tamenobu as having broken away from the Nanbu family and carved out the Tsugaru area as his own domain. In 1590, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi brought Japan under his control, Hideyoshi recognized Tamenobu's rule over Tsugaru and Nanbu Nobunao's rule over the Nanbu lands.

That split had long consequences. Tsugaru and Nanbu belonged to different domains for the roughly 260 years of the Edo period. According to the prefecture, relations between the two houses were not good from Tamenobu's break with the Nanbu until the Battle of Noheji in 1868, during the Boshin War.

Hirosaki was not the family's first base. In 1594, Tamenobu, by then called Tsugaru Tamenobu in the prefectural chronology, moved his base to Horikoshi Castle, about 4 kilometers southeast of the later Hirosaki Castle. Today the sites of Tanesato Castle in Ajigasawa, Horikoshi Castle, and Hirosaki Castle are protected together as a national Historic Site, the Tsugaru Clan Castle Sites.

Building a new castle and town

According to Aomori Prefecture, Tamenobu planned the street layout and a new castle in 1603 (Keichō 8) at Takaoka, the place that would later become Hirosaki. His wishes were carried on by his successor, Nobuhira, the second lord, who began building the castle.

The castle stands at the end of a long, narrow plateau, with the Iwaki River to the west and the Tsuchibuchi River to the east. To build it, the domain reused materials from castles that had been abandoned in various places and hired large numbers of craftsmen from Edo. The prefecture states that the work took two years.

The new castle was large for its time. The domain's official assessment was then only 47,000 koku, but the castle had a five-tiered keep, baileys, turrets, a palace, and residences for senior retainers on the scale of a powerful domain.

The prefectural chronology records that the castle was almost complete in the fifth month of 1611. Temples, shrines, the lord's retainers, and merchants then moved into the town below it. In 1628 (Kan'ei 5), the name Takaoka was changed to Hirosaki.

The keep, the turrets, and the gates

The first keep did not last long. The five-tiered keep built by Nobuhira stood at the southwest corner of the main bailey. According to Aomori Prefecture, it is said to have burned after being struck by lightning in the ninth month of Kan'ei 4 (1627).

The keep that stands today dates from 1810 (Bunka 7). It is a three-story building with a copper-plate roof at the southeast corner of the main bailey. The prefecture says that it is said to have been built with the shogunate's permission under the name of a turret, and another prefectural page describes it as a remodeled corner turret.

According to the prefecture, it is the only surviving structure of its kind in the Tohoku region. The domain itself had grown by then: in 1808, it was raised to 100,000 koku for its service in guarding Ezochi.

The keep is not the only survivor. Three corner turrets and five gates also remain, and together with the keep these nine buildings are Important Cultural Properties. The turrets and gates date from 1611.

The turrets were places to store bows and arrows and to fight from, so they have openings for arrows and guns and chutes for dropping stones. The gates are turret gates set inside square enclosures called masugata, built so that attackers could not charge straight in.

The prefecture calls Hirosaki one of the few castles in Japan to have survived the destruction of castles after the Meiji Restoration, fires, and war.

A town wrapped around the castle

The castle town was laid out to surround the long, roughly rectangular castle on all four sides, making use of the natural terrain. The north gate, known as the Kamenoko Gate and now treated as the rear gate, was originally the castle's main gate.

North of that gate, across a single street of merchants' houses called Kamenoko-machi, lay several samurai streets known together as Nakacho. In 1978 an area of about 10.6 hectares there was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings.

According to the summary prepared by Hirosaki City, the district closely follows the old division of plots. Continuous hedges of sawara cypress, gates, board fences, and front-garden trees line the streets, with wooden main houses set back behind the gardens.

Religion had its own districts. When the castle site became a national Historic Site in 1952, the designation also covered the Chōshōji enclosure, a group of 33 Zen temples, and the Shintera enclosure, which includes the five-storied pagoda of Saishōin.

From domain to park

The domain system ended with the abolition of the domains in 1871. Hirosaki Prefecture was created at first, but in the ninth month of that year it was renamed Aomori Prefecture, and the prefectural office moved to Aomori. In 1895 the castle grounds opened as Hirosaki Park, and in May 1918 the first cherry-blossom viewing party was held there.

The castle's structures still need care. To repair the stone wall of the main bailey, Hirosaki City moved the entire keep about 78 meters toward the center of the bailey in fiscal 2014–2015. Workers then took apart 2,185 stones and, between June 2021 and December 2024, laid them back again.

In 2026 the city was moving the keep back to its original base. At the same time it was reinforcing the base with four piles 2 meters across and about 35 meters long, work that was still under way in August 2026.

Visiting today

Aomori Prefecture lists the Tsugaru Clan Castle Sites, including Hirosaki Castle, as open to the public, with fees for some parts. The turrets and gates can be seen from outside.

The keep's interior is closed from 24 November 2025 until fiscal 2032, according to the city's plan as of 2026. The keep is being moved back without a covering structure, so its exterior and the work can be seen. From about autumn 2028, however, the keep is to be covered for several years of conservation work.

Four former samurai houses in Nakacho have been moved or restored and are open to the public. Because construction schedules and opening days change, check Hirosaki City's official website before visiting.