About 1,800 people gathered in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep more than two metres closer to its original position, using ropes and rollers as part of ongoing renovations at Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture.
The keep, a fortified tower within the castle, had to be moved to repair a wall damaged in a major earthquake. Participants, rotating in teams of 80, heaved on 30-metre ropes to the chants of “so-re, so-re” as the structure edged forward. On Saturday, the building, set on rails, was towed 1.13 metres, and on Sunday it was shifted another 1.09 metres.
Public interest overwhelms slots
Kensuke Hayasaka, head of the parks and green spaces division at Hirosaki City, told the Guardian that the event drew far more interest than available places. “We had about 8,000 applications for the 1,800 slots over the last two days, roughly four times oversubscribed, so not everyone could participate,” he said. “Not only from the city, but from across Japan and overseas; a fair number from south-east Asia and from Europe and North America.”
The technique used, known as hikiya, involves placing buildings on rollers and moving them without dismantling. In 2015, the city first invited the public to participate, leading to the first citizen-driven hikiya and the first time the method was used to move a castle in a century.
Preserving a cultural property
“Because the keep is a nationally designated important cultural property, we didn’t take it apart,” Hayasaka explained. “We’re using hikiya, a building-relocation method that has existed in Japan since ancient times.”
Preservation work has been ongoing since then. The wall was completed in December 2024, with all 2,185 stones restacked in their original positions. With that task finished, officials again sought public help to pull the keep back to its original spot.
Motoharu Nakata, 61, travelled from Hiroshima at the other end of Japan to take part. “I pulled it 11 years ago too. It’s very moving to be able to participate again. There’s absolutely no other opportunity to pull a castle – it was fantastic,” Nakata told the Sankei Shimbun.
Ongoing efforts and future plans
Manual pulling of the keep will continue until the end of August, with about 4,100 people scheduled to move it a total of 5 metres. This symbolic, community-building effort will cover only a fraction of the distance; the remaining roughly 73 metres will be moved using machinery by the end of the year.
The Hirosaki Castle keep is one of only 12 such structures left in Japan and the only one in the north-eastern Tohoku region. The castle, seat of the Tsugaru clan, was completed in 1611, but the original keep burned down in 1627 after a lightning strike ignited a gunpowder store. The current structure was rebuilt in 1810 and is now the centrepiece of a park that attracts about 2 million visitors annually during cherry-blossom season.
Major renovations mean the keep will not be accessible to tourists for years. “Once it’s back on the original base, the preservation work on the keep begins and the whole structure will be covered over,” Hayasaka said. “As things stand, we expect it to reopen to visitors in 2033.”
