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

In a remarkable display of community effort and historical preservation, around 1,800 people gathered in northern Japan over the weekend to manually move the 360-tonne keep of Hirosaki Castle. The fortified tower was shifted just over two meters closer to its original foundation as part of ongoing renovations.

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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. Not only from the city, but from across Japan and overseas; a fair number from south-east Asia and from Europe and North America.

The keep had to be relocated to allow for repairs to a wall damaged during a major earthquake. Teams of approximately 80 people at a time pulled on 30-meter ropes, inching the structure along rails. On Saturday, the keep moved 1.13 meters, followed by another 1.09 meters on Sunday. Kensuke Hayasaka, head of the parks and green spaces division at Hirosaki City, noted the overwhelming public interest, with about 8,000 applications for the 1,800 available slots, indicating participation from across Japan and overseas.

This meticulous relocation utilized a traditional Japanese technique known as 'hikiya,' which involves placing buildings on rollers to move them without dismantling. This method was chosen to preserve the integrity of the keep, a nationally designated important cultural property. The last time this method was used to move a castle was a century ago. The current renovation project also involved restacking all 2,185 stones of the damaged wall in their original positions, a task completed in December 2024.

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

Motoharu Nakata, who traveled from Hiroshima, expressed his deep emotion at participating for the second time, having also helped in 2015. "There is absolutely no other opportunity to pull a castle – it was fantastic," he told the Sankei Shimbun. The manual pulling effort is scheduled to continue until the end of August, with a total of about 4,100 people expected to move the keep a total of 5 meters. The remaining distance will be completed using machinery by the end of the year. The Hirosaki Castle keep is one of only 12 such structures remaining in Japan and the sole example in the northeastern Tohoku region.

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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.