1,800 Volunteers Hauled a 400-Tonne Japanese Castle Keep Back Toward Its Original Home
Roughly 1,800 people in northern Japan pulled a 360-tonne castle keep just over two metres closer to its original resting place over the weekend of August 22–23, 2026, as part of a multi-phase renovation project at Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture. Rotating teams of 80 people heaved on 30-metre ropes to move the keep, which was set on rails. On Saturday, participants towed it 1.13 metres; on Sunday it shifted another 1.09 metres The Guardian.
The operation brings a structure back to where it started. In 2015, the keep was moved roughly 70 metres so its stone walls could undergo extensive repairs Stripes. The wall beneath the keep was finished in December 2024, with all 2,185 stones restacked in their original positions The Guardian. Now the keep itself is being walked back into place.
The technique used is called hikiya, a traditional Japanese method that involves putting buildings on rollers and moving them intact rather than taking them apart. In 2015, Hirosaki city issued a public call for participants, which led to the first citizen-driven hikiya and the first use of the method to move a castle in a century The Guardian.
Public enthusiasm for this round ran just as high. Kensuke Hayasaka, head of the parks and green spaces division at Hirosaki City, said about 8,000 people applied for the 1,800 participation slots over the two days — roughly four times oversubscribed. Motoharu Nakata, 61, travelled from Hiroshima to take part and had also pulled the keep 11 years earlier The Guardian. Princess Hanako, Emperor Naruhito's aunt, attended a restoration ceremony tied to the project Town & Country.
The hand-pulling phase is scheduled to continue through the end of August, with about 4,100 people moving the keep a total of 5 metres. The remaining roughly 73 metres will be done using machinery by the end of the year The Guardian. The broader public event, known in English as "Pull It! Go for It! Hirosaki Castle 2026," runs from August 21 to 28, during which visitors can watch the keep being moved Japan Travel.
Hirosaki Castle, seat of the Tsugaru clan, was completed in 1611. The original keep burned down after a lightning strike ignited a gunpowder store in 1627; the current structure dates to 1810. It is one of only 12 original castle keeps left in Japan and the only one in the north-eastern Tohoku region. Hirosaki Castle park draws about 2 million visitors each year during cherry-blossom season. Hirosaki City expects the keep to reopen to visitors in 2033 after preservation work The Guardian.
A discrepancy worth noting: The Guardian's August 25 article carries a headline and URL slug stating the keep weighs 400 tonnes, while the article body describes a 360-tonne structure. Japanese news outlets including the Sankei, Asahi, and Okinawa Times have consistently reported the keep at approximately 400 tonnes, and the Hirosaki Park official website lists the total weight as approximately 400 tonnes against a height of 14.4 metres and three tiers Hirosaki Park. The 360-tonne figure in The Guardian's body text appears to be the outlier; the more widely corroborated figure is approximately 400 tonnes.
The broader context here is the intersection of heritage conservation, civic participation, and traditional engineering that the Hirosaki project embodies. Japan's surviving castle keeps are finite and irreplaceable cultural assets, each requiring periodic repair of the stone-wall foundations beneath them. The standard approach would be to dismantle the superstructure, repair the stonework, and rebuild. What Hirosaki chose instead was to move the keep whole, preserving the structure's integrity while repairing the wall beneath, and to open the hauling itself to public participation — turning a technical necessity into a communal act of stewardship. The hikiya location was even planned at a position where Mt. Iwaki can be seen in the background, an aesthetic choice that reflects the cultural framing of the operation Hirosaki Park.
The 2015 citizen-driven hikiya was a first for a castle. This month's return operation completes the arc, bringing the keep back to its platform roughly 11 years after it was moved out Hirosaki City. With the mechanical phase still ahead and a 2033 reopening targeted, the project's long timeline reflects the painstaking standards applied to designated cultural properties in Japan, where preservation cycles are measured in decades, not years.
