Article Toba Castle

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Sankei Shimbun reported on 7 December that an undiscovered drawing of Toba Castle had been salvaged from a delivery of waste paper brought to a recycling facility. Along with other historical documents, twenty of which concerned Toba Castle, the drawing is a masterpiece of (disaster) history.


Toba Castle

Fortunately, the discovered historical documents were entrusted to the Toba Local History Society. The pile comprised 310 items, primarily consisting of haikus from the Meiji era, likely recited during festivals at local shrines. Also included are fishing-related documents from the Edo and Meiji periods, covering activities like whaling and mullet fishing alongside diverse folk materials. Notably, approximately twenty papers pertain to Toba Castle and its surrounding areas.

Toba Castle, situated on the coast, has faced the devastating impact of tsunamis from Nankai Trough earthquakes twice – once in 1707 during the mid-Edo period and again in 1854 towards the end of the Edo era. Furthermore, it has experienced frequent damage from severe storms. Among the documents is a drawing depicting the extent of damage inflicted by a 1799 storm. This drawing, rendered in red ink on the stone walls of the outer bailey facing the sea, records the collapse of a wall section measuring three shaku (approximately 0.9 metres) in height and 17 ken (roughly 31 metres) in length.

Following the issuance of the One Castle per Province Order by the ruling Tokugawa clan in 1615, the construction of new castles was generally prohibited. Moreover, any castle restoration required explicit approval from the shogunate. To obtain this approval, detailed restoration plans had to be submitted to senior councillors in advance, including red markings indicating the areas to be repaired.

The restoration plans of Toba Castle are considered invaluable historical materials, offering a visual representation of the scale of past disasters. The recent discovery adds to the existing collection, bringing the total number of plans to ten, encompassing six distinct types. Notably, this discovery completes the set of five restoration plans created in 1725 during the rule of the Inagaki family, the last lords of the Toba domain, before the castle's eventual abandonment in the early Meiji era.


 

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