1,800 Volunteers Pull a 360-Tonne Castle by Hand in Japan
Nearly 1,800 people gathered in Aomori prefecture in northern Japan last weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep two metres across the ground using nothing but ropes and collective muscle.
The keep of Hirosaki Castle, a three-storey wooden tower originally built in 1810, was placed fully intact on rollers and hauled by volunteers tugging 30-metre-long ropes in rotating groups of 80, according to Dezeen Dezeen. People magazine reported that participants pulled the keep on August 26, 2026 People.
The technique is called hikiya — a traditional Japanese method of relocating entire buildings intact, without dismantling them. Hirosaki city first called for volunteers to take part in the process back in 2015, when the keep had to be moved off its original site so that an earthquake-damaged stone wall beneath it could be repaired Dezeen. That wall was fully restored in December 2024, clearing the way for the keep to come home.
The hand-pulled phase is only the first leg of a longer journey. Approximately 4,100 people were expected to participate overall, moving the keep a total of five metres by hand through sessions that were set to continue for the rest of August Dezeen. The remaining 73 metres to its final resting place will be handled by machinery, with completion expected before the end of the year.
Recruitment for the volunteer pulling experience, known as hikimodoshi — meaning "return" — closed on May 29, 2026, according to Hirosaki city's official website Hirosaki City. A pre-event symposium on the keep's hikiya process and stone walls had been held at Hirosaki Culture Center on January 25, 2026, ahead of the return Hirosaki City.
What makes the scene arresting is the sheer contrast of scale: a centuries-old castle tower, weighing as much as roughly 60 adult elephants, inching forward because dozens of people at a time decided to lean into a rope. The method dates back centuries in Japan, used for temples, shrines and castle structures alike, but seeing it deployed in 2026 — with volunteers signing up through a municipal website — gives the ancient technique a distinctly communal, almost festival-like quality.
Hirosaki Castle is one of the few remaining original castle keeps in northern Japan, and its return to the repaired stone wall marks the final chapter of a restoration project more than a decade in the making. The keep never left the castle grounds — it was moved roughly 70 metres away in 2015 as a temporary measure. Now it is heading back, five metres at a time, by hand.
