Morioka Castle

Morioka Castle is a hirayama-style Japanese castle built in 1611. It became the seat of the Nanbu extended family, a tozama daimyo extended family who dominated over Morioka Domain, Mutsu Province inside the Tohoku region of northern Japan. The castle is positioned in what is now central Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. It became additionally referred to as Kozukata Castle but strictly talking this call relates to the predecessor of Morioka Castle on the identical web site. Because of its strategic geographic role, the place around Morioka were regarded as the centre of northern Oshu because the creation of nearby Shiwa Castle by the Yamato dynasty within the early Heian period.

The place become later contested between the Abe clan and the Kiyohara clan in the Former Nine Years War, and it's far believed that the first fortification had been erected in this website by means of the Kiyohara extended family. The Kiyohara were destroyed by using the Northern Fujiwara of Hiraizumi, who in flip were destroyed by way of the Minamoto clan of the Kamakura shogunate. The area then got here under the control of the Kudo clan, who were retainers of the Minamoto. During the Muromachi period, the Kudo extended family became divided among supporters of Emperor Go-Daigo and supporters of the Ashikaga clan, and have been for this reason displaced via the Nanbu clan, who had already been established to the north.