Construction

Maruoka Castle is considered to have been constructed in 1576 by Shibata Katsutoyo, who was the nephew and adopted son of Shibata Katsuie, one of Oda Nobunaga's leading generals.^[2]

According to the legend of "O-shizu Hitobashira" the castle was constructed with a human pillar. During construction the stone base of the tenshu kept collapsing no matter how many times it was piled up. A vassal suggested that they should make someone a human sacrifice (hitobashira) to appease the gods. O-shizu, a one-eyed woman who had two children and lived a poor life, was selected. She resolved to become the sacrifice on the condition that one of her children be taken in by Katsutoyo and made a samurai. Standing in position the base stones were positioned around her, until they eventually crushed her to death.^[2] Her sacrifice allowed the construction to be successfully completed. Katsutoyo was however unable to fulfil his promise to O-shizu before he moved to another province.^[2] Resentful that her son had not been made a samurai her spirit according to legend would make the moat overflow with spring rain when the season of cutting algae came in April every year. People called it, "the rain caused by the tears of O-shizu's sorrow" and erected a small tomb to soothe her spirit. There was a poem handed down, "The rain which falls when the season of cutting algae comes Is the rain reminiscent of the tears of the poor O-shizu's sorrow".^[3]

Although built in the Momoyama period (1575-1600) the design is more indicative of earlier fortresses of the Sengoku period (1477-1575) . As it was being sited on top of a low hill it was decided to mount the tenshu on a high stone base in order to gain additional height. However at the time successful techniques of constructing such a steep faced base were still in their infancy, especially when using rough uncut stones (known as nozurazumi) in a steeply inclined base as adopted at Maruoka.^[2] This random-style piling of stones is suggested as the source of the instability in the walls during the construction period.^[4]

Tokugawa shogunate

After Shibata Katsutoyo died of illness during the Battle of Shizugatake in 1583, the castle was given to the Aoyama clan. However, the Aoyama sided with the Western Army under Ishida Mitsunari during the Battle of Sekigahara and were thus dispossessed by the victorious Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu awarded Echizen Province to his son, Yūki Hideyasu, who in turn created a 26,000 koku holding centered at Maruoka for his retainer, Imamura Moritsugu. In 1613,^[5] due to an O-Ie Sōdō within Fukui Domain, the Tokugawa shogunate raised Maruoka Domain to 40,000 koku and assigned it to Honda Narishige, the son of Honda Shigetsugu, one of Ieyasu's leading generals. Due to Honda Narishige's efforts at the Siege of Osaka in 1624, the kokudaka of the domain was further raised to 46,300 koku. His son and grandson completed the castle and the surrounding jōkamachi. However, his great-grandson, Honda Shigemasu was an alcoholic and incompetent, and was dispossessed by the shogunate in 1695.^[5] The Honda were replaced by Arima Kiyosumi, a descendant of the Kirishitan daimyō Arima Harunobu. The Arima clan continued to rule Maruoka for eighth generations until the abolition of the han system in July 1871 during the Meiji restoration.

Meiji restoration

After the Meiji restoration, almost all Japanese castle keeps and many other castle buildings around the country were demolished. In the case of Maruoka while many of the castle buildings were demolished and various gates, stone walls, and trees were sold off, the tenshu and castle grounds was purchased in 1901 by the town of Maruoka and became a park. The pentagonal moat surrounding the castle was gradually filled in and partly built between the late Taishō era to the early Shōwa era.

The tenshu was registered as a National Treasure on 30 January 1934. The tenshu collapsed due to the destruction of its stone base during the 1948 Fukui earthquake.^[2] In 1955 the base was rebuilt using 70% of the original pillars and about 60% of the original beams by installing a reinforced concrete frame and piling the original stones around it before re-erecting the tenshu on top.^[6] At that time, the structure of the windows on the top floor was changed from sliding doors to push-up windows.

The castle was re-designated an Important Cultural Property in 1950 under the revised Law for Protection of Cultural Properties. A number of the castle gates also survive in private hands, including one at the temple of Kōzen-ji in Komatsu, Ishikawa and one at the temple of Renshō-ji in the city of Awara, Fukui.

Investigations into its construction date

The Maruoka Castle Research and Research Committee led by (Junichi Yoshida from the Fukui University of Technology) was commissioned by the Board of Education of Sakai City to survey the castle. By dating the timber used in the construction of the tenshu from dendrochronology, radiocarbon concentration, and oxygen isotope ratio, they reported after four years of investigations in March 2019 that most of the through pillars, which play a structurally important role, were cut down after 1626.^[7] Confusing matters was the observation that the architectural style of Maruoka's tenshu was considered outdated by the 1620s.^[7] This would indicate that if it had been built in 1576 by Shibata Katsutoyo as generally assumed, it would have been heavily reconstructed in the latter half of the 1620s (mostly likely in 1628) by the Honda clan following Honda Narishige being assigned ownership of the castle in 1613.^[8]

In October 2019 the northeast exterior wall of the tenshu was damaged by a typhoon and were subsequently repaired by the Tanaka Shrine Co.^[9]