Goryokaku

After Hakodate was opened to foreign ships under the treaties of the 1850s, the shogunate placed a magistrate there to govern the port and southern Ezo (Hokkaido). To move the magistrate's office out of range of naval guns, it commissioned a fortress inland. The scholar Takeda Ayasaburō, who had studied Western military science, designed a pentagonal star fort in the manner of European bastion fortresses, with moats and earth ramparts faced with stone.

The five pointed bastions were meant to allow defenders to cover every approach with crossfire. Inside the ramparts stood the magistrate's office with a small watchtower, storehouses and other buildings. The fort was completed in 1866, only two years before the shogunate fell.

After the Meiji Restoration, Goryōkaku became the headquarters of Enomoto Takeaki's former shogunate forces, who declared an administration in Ezo in late 1868. Their surrender here in June 1869 ended the Boshin War. The buildings were later demolished except for one storehouse, and the fort was used as a parade ground before opening as a public park in 1914. The magistrate's office was reconstructed in wood and opened in 2010.

Hakodate became one of Japan's first ports open to foreign ships in the 1850s, and the shogunate established the Hakodate Magistrate's office in 1854. Construction of the fort began in 1857, the stone walls were completed first, and the magistrate moved into the new office in 1864. All works were completed in 1866.

In late 1868 former shogunate forces under Enomoto Takeaki occupied the fort. The new government's army and navy attacked in the spring of 1869; the samurai Hijikata Toshizō, formerly of the Shinsengumi, was killed in the fighting in Hakodate, and Enomoto surrendered on 27 June 1869. The fort then passed to the army, and ice cut from its moats was sold as 'Hakodate ice'. The site became a Historic Site in the Taishō era and a Special Historic Site in 1952.

Goryōkaku is the symbol of Hakodate's role at the edge of the Tokugawa world: a port opened to foreign ships, a fortress built with Western knowledge and the scene of the last battle between the shogunate's loyalists and the new imperial government. Figures such as Enomoto Takeaki and Hijikata Toshizō remain popular in novels, dramas and manga, and the Goryōkaku Festival in May re-enacts the period with a costumed procession.

As a park, the fort is also Hakodate's most popular place for hanami. Because cherry blossom arrives late in Hokkaido, the ramparts turn pink when the season in Honshu has long passed, and the outline of the star, filled with blossom, is one of the best-known spring images of northern Japan.