A STUDY ON THE HONMARU PALACE IN AZUCHI CASTLE

Abstract

 Azuchi castle was constructed by Oda Nobunaga in 1579. There were many buildings in the castle, such as Tenshu (castle main tower), towers, gates and palaces. However, the plans of these buildings are not known.
 This paper examines the Honmaru palace in Azuchi castle. This castle became the standard form of the early modern castles. Therefore it is important to study the Honmaru palace in order to elucidate some unclear points on the residences in those days.
 As a result of excavation in the Honmaru area, a lot of foundation stones were detected. Izumi Fujimura as an archaeologist studied on these stones and made a diagram of the restored buildings of the Honmaru palace which is very similar to Seiryo-den (one of the buildings of the Japanese emperor's palace).
 In contrast, I review these stones and traces withdrawn the stones and point out that the Fujimura's proposal is quite different from the correct arrangement of these stones and traces. In his proposal, a lot of posts stand on the spot without stones and a lot of large stones which should have been used for the foundation are disregarded. For this reason, his proposal may not be correct at all.
 In the original Honmaru palace, there were two large buildings which formed a line to the east and west across the inner court and a corridor which connected the two buildings. In the south side of the west building there were three rooms: one was a 2 spans east-west by 3 spans north-south room of the size, the other were 2 spans east-west by 2 spans north-south rooms. Besides, a veranda (4 spans east-west by 1 span north-south) was placed in front of the two rooms, and these rooms and the veranda were enclosed by another 1 span wide veranda. The plan of the Honmaru palace was similar to tsune-no-gosho of Higashiyama-dono (Shogun Yoshimasa Ashikaga's palace).
 According to “Shincho-ko-ki” (the biography of Nobunaga Oda written by Gyuichi Ota) we can know several names of palaces and buildings such as Zashiki and Miyukino-mima (emperor's guest room), Nan-den (south palace) and Kounji-goten (Kounji temple palace). Masafumi Kato examined “Shincho-ko-ki” and pointed out that Miyukino-mima was in Ninomaru, Nan-den was in Honmaru and Kounji-goten was in Sannomaru. If these palaces and buildings may be defined those of in Shogun's palace, Zashiki and Miyukino-mima were taimensho (a building for meeting of official ceremony), Nanden was tsune-no-gosho (a building for living) and Kounji-goten was kaisho (a building for private meeting and entertainment).