To Mihara Castle Ruins

 

There is not a lot left of Mihara Castle, but what is left is somewhat striking.

I arrived in Mihara at the end of day 12 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage and took a ferry from Ikuchijima Island after having visited temple number 11 Kojoji, with its marvellous 15 century National Treasure pagoda.

Mihara is quite a busy little port with numerous ferries servicing the islands of the Inland Sea and even across to Shikoku. There is also some shipbuilding.

The castle was built in 1567 and greatly expanded over the following decades. It was built on a couple of small islands in the mouth of the Nuta River. At high tide it appeared to be floating on the sea and was known as the "floating castle".

The base for the tenshu is pretty much all that remains now, and it was built during expansion in 1595, though no tenshu was built. It was a pretty large cattle measuring 1 kilometer by 600 meters and had 14 gates and 32 yagura.

It was the easternmost fortification for the Mori Clan and the important Sanyodo highway passed through the outer fortifications.

In the Edo Period it was controlled by the Asano Clan since 1619 and was a branch castle of the Hiroshima Domain.

In the early Meiji Period most of the buildings were dismantled and sold as lumber. In 1894 with the construction of Mihara Station much of the stonework was taken away and used in the construction of Itozaki Port. Land reclamation moved the seashore further away and the final straw was the expansion of Mihara Station for the Shinkansen in 1975.

The previous post in this series on the Chugoku Pilgrimage was Kojoji Temple and its ancient pagoda.