Aizu Samurai Residences｜Aizuwakamatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture

The Aizu samurai spirit, which was called the essence of our country’s bushido, was systematically established with the establishment of feudal society in the Middle Ages and the education of the Nisshinkan, a feudal school, in the early modern period.

The defeat in World War II dealt a painful blow to public sentiment, and in combination with the social changes that followed, the once solid old style began to decline, and as many cultural properties were scattered and lost, it became difficult to retain the unique traditional spirit of Aizu.

Under such circumstances, local volunteers with a strong sense of duty to pass down to future generations a vision of what Aizu used to be as a samurai province, gathered together and discovered a bird’s-eye view of the residence of a feudal lord, which led to the realization of this restoration plan.

The Aizu Buke Yashiki was completed through meticulous design and careful work based on rigorous period research, using the remains of existing samurai residences in the Shinshu Highway, and also including related buildings and parts thereof.

Shiro Saigo, a judo prodigy who was invincible with his signature technique called “Arashi” and who suddenly appeared in the middle of the Meiji period in the aftermath of the Boshin War, was born in Aizu Castle, moved to what is now Tsugawa-cho, Niigata Prefecture, and came to Tokyo in 1882 to study at the Kodokan founded by Jigoro Kano.

In the same year, he was promoted to 5-dan, and was proclaimed one of Kodokan’s four heavenly kings.

Kano also praised the technique of the master, saying, “No one has ever excelled in this art among his tens of thousands of students.

Shiro was the third son of Teijiro Shida, a samurai of the Aizu domain, but by a strange historical coincidence, he was adopted by Yoritomo Hoshina (Saigo’s mother) in 1874, and Shiro was born in the Saigo family in 1872.

He was a legend in the world of judo, but in 1892, eight years after his initiation, he suddenly left the Kodokan and settled in Nagasaki, where he became the editor-in-chief of the Toyo Hinode Shimbun after a tortuous path that he had to follow.

In addition to judo, Shiro excelled in spearmanship and iaido, and had mastered the art of kyudo.

Soseki Natsume used Shiro as a model for his novel “Bo-chan,” in which Yama-arashi appears, and Tsuneo Tomita published the novel “Sanshiro,” which became an unprecedented blockbuster hit.

It is also well known that Akira Kurosawa’s debut film was “Sanshiro in Shape.
The following is a summary of the results of the survey.

Yoritomo Saigo and Shiro Saigo were linked by an invisible thread, and had to share a strange fate together.

In accordance with the green, a statue of Shiro was erected in front of the gate of the reconstructed residence to commemorate his footsteps for a long time.

The Saigo family was the Matsumasa family of the Aizu domain, a family of 1,700 koku (1,700 koku) that held the position of retainer for generations.

This luxurious and grandiose residence of the retainer boasted a site area of 2,400 tsubo and a building area of 2,800 tsubo, and had 38 rooms.

The Shikyakumon (four-legged gate), Shikidai entrance, and the devil’s tile with a nine-dawn emblem on the crown were privileges granted to the Saigou family because of its high status.