Aizuwakamatsu Travel Guide

Aizuwakamatsu (会津若松市) is a city in western Fukushima Prefecture, northern Honshū, and the most important city in the Aizu basin, with a population of about 125,000 residents. Established as a castle town of the Aizu Domain (会津藩 Aizu-han) in 1592, much of the city burned in the Boshin Civil War...

Tsuruga Castle Aizuwakamatsu Castle (会津若松城 Aizu-Wakamatsu-jō), commonly referred to as Tsuruga Castle (鶴ヶ城 Tsuruga-jō), is a reconstruction of the original castle built by the Ashina clan (蘆名氏) in the fourteenth century. It was an important administrative centre in eastern Japan and the seat of...

Oyakuen (御薬園) is also known as " Aizuwakamatsu's Royal Garden ". The second Chinese character 薬 (kusuri or yaku) means "medicine" and refers to the fact that medicinal plants and herbs were grown there. The garden was initially built from 1429 to 1441 as a villa for Ashina Morihisa, the tenth...

The Aizu Buke-yashiki (会津武家屋敷) are the reconstructed samurai mansions of the chief retainers of the Aizu-Matsudaira, the Saigō family. The Saigō had served the Matsudaira since the middle of the seventeenth century. The reconstructed manor is based on plans dating back to end of the eighteenth...

Mount Iimori (飯盛山 Iimoriyama) is located east of Aizuwakamatsu JR Station in the town of Aizuwakamatsu in western Fukushima. In 1868, it was the location of a mass suicide of a Byakkotai unit consisting of twenty teenagers, all sons of Aizu samurai fighting against the invading pro-imperial...

The Matsudaira Tombs (会津藩主松平家墓所 院内御廟 Aizuhan shumatsu dairake bosho in'naigobyō) are located in the southeastern part of Aizuwakamatsu, close to Higashiyama Village, on a hill not far from the Aizu Bukeyashiki samurai mansions. The mountain contains the tombs of eight out of nine generations...

The history of sake-brewing in Aizu goes back to the sixteenth century when Gamō Ujisato (蒲生氏郷, 1556-1595) came into Aizu by order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉） and invited sake brewers into the domain. Since the climate as well as the primary local ingredients, water and rice, are perfectly...

The Byakkotai (白虎隊, “White Tiger Brigade”) was one of four units, consisting of a few hundred youths, the sons of samurai, organised after the Battle of Toba-Fushimi in March 1868 by the Aizu Domain (会津藩 Aizu-han). The Aizu clan of the Matsudaira (松平, part of the Hoshina clan 保科氏) was closely...