Hachioji Castle Ruins

In Japan, we have some beautiful castles. Different from these, this is a special castle remains includes palace and residential town area, and fortress in the deep mountains.
Walking the narrow and steep paths in the mountains, you’ll find some tactical bases and traps. It is very intriguing to understand how these traps are leveraging the cohort group minds. For example a small square area in front of the gate, it’s called koguchi (虎口) , it leads soldiers and confines them.

This castle was involved the series of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Odawara Battle and fell in 1590. And finally it was destroyed perfectly by the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo era.

It’s almost mountain climbing but you can enjoy both hiking and visiting historical remains.

Beautifully reconstructed bridges and carefully excavated and rebuilt  stone walls were breathtaking.
There are also sad stories of losers.  When I came to the waterfall near the castle and knew a sad story that just after being defeated the battle, many women and children and samurai warriors  committed suicide by the swords and threw themselves into the waterfall. And the story ends with the legend that river turned red with blood for three days and three nights.