Castle Hunting: The Ruins of Sumpu & Fukuoka Castle

A shot from the outside of the Fukuoka castle ruins. 

So one of the great pleasures of last year’s dinosaur zoo tour was that I could visit so many of Japan’s traditional castles all over the country. Unfortunately however, soon after that, my phone fell out of my pocket while I was on my bike and was destroyed before I could back it up. As such all of the pics I had of those places are now gone :(  Now that I am back on tour around the country again this year, the first thing I wanted to do was start castle hunting again. 

The outside corner of the Sumpu castle ruins in Shizuoka. While the castle itself is gone; some of the
towers and structures still remain. 

A lot of Japanese castles utilized narrow passageways to create bottlenecks where would be attackers/invaders could be picked off. 

Thus far I have had a chance to visit two of them; The Sumpu castle ruins in Shizuoka and the Fukuoka castle ruins. While a lot of Japan’s castles are in excellent condition, castle ruins are not uncommon as well. I think this is because when Tokugawa Ieyasu unified the country, he also commanded that a great deal of the smaller warlord's castles be burned to the ground to limit their power, resources and ability to fight back.

Coincidentally, another interesting thing he did was insisting that all local warlords move (with their entire entourage) to Tokyo (then Edo) every other year. In doing so, he could not only keep a close eye on their activities, but by forcing them to move their estate so often, he could also continually wipe out their financial power base, making them easier to control. 

As these massive entourages of thousands of people were constantly traveling back and forth to Edo, this also turned Osaka into a massive trade hub, made it Japan's second biggest city, and also embued it with the outgoing, friendly, (but often brash), and barter-oriented culture that it is still known for today.

While the towers and some structures remain, the palaces of Sumpu and Fukuoka castles are long gone, and nothing but pathways and empty fields remain. 

In any event, in the case of both castles, the main palaces were gone and all that was really there was the outskirts and/or some of the towers. In both cases, the main area was more or less turned into a park where events and things are held, but in the Fukuoka ruins, a lot of the interesting aspects of the architecture were also still intact- even if the main palace itself was completely gone.Still super cool to visit though. With only two weeks left on the tour, I am still hoping to get to at least a few more before we are done. 

Japanese castles (seemingly like modern Japanese homes) usually have mega-steep stairs. Having to do a fall on stairs like these would be a stuntman's worst nightmare, lol. 

These small windows along this corner tower were on both sides of the structure. Back in the day, they were used to load and drop massive rocks onto anyone who was trying to scale the castle walls. Not a very pleasant way to go. 

Moats and canals everywhere

Obviously, the fish weren't left to starve, haha