Kitaōmi Jōkan ruins
archaeological site in Japan
The Kitaōmi Fortification ruins (北近江城館跡群, Kitaōmi jōkan ato-gun) the name of a Japanese National Historic Site located in the city of Nagahama in northern Shiga Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The site consists of the Shimosaka clan residence ruins (下坂氏館跡, Shimosaka-ke jōkan ato) and the Mitamura clan residence ruins (三田村氏館跡, Mitamura-ke jōkan).
Overview
The site of Shimosaka clan residence is in the Shimosakanaka-cho neighborhood in the southwestern part of the Nagahama Plain in the northern part of the prefecture. It is located in a very high natural river levee. The Shimosaka were local samurai from this area of Ōmi Province who were recorded as being in the service of the Ashikaga clan from 1336. They were active from the Onin War into the Sengoku period, by which time they had become vassals of the Kyōgoku clan and later the Azai clan. Following the destruction of the Azai clan by then forces of Oda Nobunaga, they abandoned their samurai status and returned to farming; however, even into the Edo period remained involved in the affairs of Hikone Domain. The descendants of the Shimosaka clan still live at and manage this site. The ruined fortified residence consists of an almost square site about 89 meters east-to-west and about 87 meters north-to-south, surrounded by double earthworks with a height of one to two meters and a width of two to five meters. It is surrounded by a three meter wide moat.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kitaōmi Jōkan ruins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.