I’m very excited to introduce what is the first ever guest post on the Japanese Castle Explorer blog. Paula Curtis of the Shinpai deshou blog, has a strong interest in Japanese castles and has kindly offered the following translation. I would urge everyone to learn more about what the Shinpai deshou blog is all about by clicking on the relevant icons found in the box below. Enjoy!

This is an excerpt translated from Sengoku no shiro 戦国の城 (Sengoku castles) by Owada Tetsuo 小和田哲男. I am not a professional translator, just a castle enthusiast and soon to be medieval specialist, so any mistakes or awkwardness in translation are my own. Kanji for certain keywords not readily available in standard dictionaries have been added in, as well as footnotes and links for clarity.

Paula Curtis

Ancient Castles

Were the beginnings of castles highland settlements and moated settlements?

…In recent years, because of excavations of Yayoi period (300 BC- 300 CE) villages, structures that one ought to call the very first castles are being revealed. Now, it has become mainstream to urge scholars to consider Yayoi villages the oldest form of castles (not the existing kōgishi 神籠石 [1] and Tōhōku jōsaku 城柵 [2]). In this case, villages were highland settlements (高地性集落 ) and moated settlements (環濠集落).

First, as the name suggests, highland settlements were villages created on top of hills or mountains. However, they weren’t just settlements in high places. People established a village by digging continuous with the land on long, narrow plateaus, or digging along a succession of peaks on a mountain, thereby strengthening their defenses. At the Kannonjiyama site in Osaka prefecture, the ruins of roughly 173 buildings were confirmed in the village, and at the Fukikoshibara site in Yamaguchi prefecture, the remains of 10 buildings were also found.

Remains of a highland settlement in Hofu City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. (Image credit: Hofu City Website)

Until recently, it was believed that these highland settlements appeared in mid-Yayoi period. However, in the Seto inland area as well as the Kinki region, early Yayoi highland settlements have been found, and it’s been surmised that these settlements began from a rather early stage.

A moated settlement. (Image credit: 水野誠人)

Moated settlements were what brought highland settlements down to level land. They didn’t just dig moats, but examples of defense with fence lines (柵列) also appear, and these settlements completely assume the shape of a castle. There’s a great number of moated settlements that have been found which were built right around the time of Himiko [3] in the 2nd century. In one such example, the Ōzuka site in Kanagawa prefecture, there’s roughly 90 residential structures enclosed by a moat totaling 65 meters in length. The width of the moat is about 4 meters, and brings to mind the moats of medieval clan mansions. At the Yoshinogari site in Saga prefecture, in addition to moats, pillar holes of watchtowers have been found, and it is also said to have possibly been one of the “provinces” of the Yamataikoku (the ancient country of Wa, domain of Queen Himiko).

In Yoshinogari as well as the moated settlement of the Ikegamisone site in Osaka prefecture, storehouses and residences have been discovered outside of their moats. Such a placement outside of the moats would have meant that the moat wasn’t necessarily serving a defensive purpose, and some archaeologists do not see these moated settlements as simply defensive establishments, but a place of commerce for ancient peoples—in other words, some think they may have been ancient markets.

Next sections on ancient castles:
Kōgoishi and Korean-style mountain castles
Castle construction in the time of Emperor Tenji and Chinese style castles
Tōhoku jōsaku