Japan enlists 1,800 people to drag a 360-tonne castle keep using ropes and rollers

To chants of “so-re, so-re”, about 1,800 people came together in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep a little more than two metres closer to its original resting place as part of ongoing renovations.

The keep – a fortified tower within a castle – had to be moved to repair a wall that was damaged in a major earthquake.

Rotating teams of 80 people heaved on 30-metre ropes as the keep of Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture edged closer to its destination. On Saturday participants towed the building – which has been set on rails – 1.13m, while on Sunday it was shifted another 1.09m.

“We had about 8,000 applications for the 1,800 slots over the last two days, roughly four times oversubscribed, so not everyone could participate,” Kensuke Hayasaka, head of the parks and green spaces division at Hirosaki City, told the Guardian. “Not only from the city, but from across Japan and overseas; a fair number from south-east Asia and from Europe and North America.”

In order to preserve the historic structure, a technique known as hikiya – whereby buildings are put on rollers and moved rather than dismantled – was used. In 2015 the city put out a call for people to come and participate directly. The result was the first citizen-driven hikiya, and the first time the method has been used in any form to move a castle for a century.

“Because the keep is a nationally designated important cultural property, we didn’t take it apart,” Hayasaka said. “We’re using hikiya, a building-relocation method that has existed in Japan since ancient times.”

Work to preserve the castle has been going on since. The wall was completed in December 2024, with all 2,185 stones restacked in their original positions.

With that task completed, this year officials again asked for the public’s help to pull the keep back to its original position.

Motoharu Nakata, 61, travelled from Hiroshima at the other end of Japan. “I pulled it 11 years ago too. It’s very moving to be able to participate again. There’s absolutely no other opportunity to pull a castle – it was fantastic,” Nakata told the Sankei Shimbun.

Pulling the keep by hand will continue until the end of August, with about 4,100 people scheduled to move it a total of 5m. It is a symbolic, community-building effort and the rest of the about 73m will be carried out using machinery by the end of the year.

The keep at Hirosaki Castle is one of 12 such structures left in Japan, and the only one in the north-eastern Tohoku region. Seat of the Tsugaru clan, the castle was completed in 1611 but the original keep burned down after a lightning strike ignited a gunpowder store in 1627. The current structure was rebuilt in 1810 and the castle is now the centrepiece of a park that draws about 2 million visitors each year during cherry-blossom season.

Major renovations mean the keep will not be accessible to tourists for years.

“Once it’s back on the original base, the preservation work on the keep begins and the whole structure will be covered over,” Hayasaka said. “As things stand, we expect it to reopen to visitors in 2033.”