Goryōkaku
Goryōkaku is a star fort in the Japanese city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. The fortress was completed in 1866. It was the main headquarters of the short-lived Republic of Ezo.
History
Goryōkaku was designed in 1855 by Takeda Ayasaburō, a Rangaku scholar.He studied the fortified cities of Europe in the early modern period to design a fort that could protect against battles using guns and cannons. It took nearly seven years for the construction. The fortress was completed in 1866, two years before the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate. It is shaped like a five-pointed star. This allowed for greater numbers of gun emplacements on its walls than a traditional Japanese fortress, and reduced the number of blind spots where a cannon could not fire.
The fort was built by the Tokugawa shogunate, he ordered Takeda Ayasaburō to design the fort for the purpose of protecting Tsugaru Strait. It became the capital of the Republic of Ezo, a state that existed only in 1869. It was the site of the last battle of the Boshin War between the Republic and the Empire of Japan. The fighting lasted for a week.
After the war, most of the buildings were torn down due to their association with the Tokugawa shogunate and the Tokugawa-allied rebels, and the fortress was left unused. The moat was used for collecting ice in the winter, forming a considerable commercial industry. The ice was sold on Honshu under the name "Goryōkaku Ice".
Park
Goryōkaku became a park in 1914 and was declared as a Special Historical Site in 1952. Nowadays it is part of Hakodate city museum and houses numerous cherry trees, being a famous spot for cherry-blossom viewing in spring.Next to Goryōkaku is an observation tower and a visitor center, built in 2006. The tower offers a birds-eye view of the fortress, the surrounding city and Mount Hakodate, in addition to an exhibition about the history of the fortress and the various people associated with it. Majorly featured is Hijikata Toshizō, who has multiple statues within the tower.
While all but one of the historical buildings in Goryōkaku were torn down after the war, a partial reconstruction of its main building – the magistrate's office – has been built. Planning and archaeological investigation started in 1985, construction began in 2006, and the building was finished in 2010. The reconstructed magistrate's office houses an exhibition about the history of the building as the Tokugawa shogunate's brief administrative center of Hokkaido, Goryōkaku as a whole, and the reconstruction process.