Kitanosho, the Lost Castle

There are only 12 castles in Japan that survived in their original form. Many other Japanese castles were rebuilt during the 1960's, with modern techniques and with the exterior reproducing the original look, but there some which were lost forever, remaining only in old drawings and stories...

Here is one of them, the Kitanosho castle from Fukui, a castle that was famous during its time but today can be admired only as a scale-model. When it was built, in 1575, it was the castle with the highest number of floors in Japan: 9!

Kitanosho is known today as "the lost castle" because its lord, Shibata Katsuie, after loosing the battle of Shizugatake, locked himself inside the castle and burned it to the ground, killing its own family and committing seppuku. This happened only 8 years after the castle was built...

The scale model from today's photo is located right were the Kitanosho castle once stood, very close to the JR Fukui Station.