Atsushi Castle

Ancestral Home of the Kiku Clan

The home of the Kiku clan for centuries, Atsushi Castle overlooks the town of Atsushi. Built in the year 1237, the castle has undergone many renovations and changes, and has even moved locations once. The castle in its current form was finished in the year 1403, and has not been updated in a meaningful way in almost a century.
The castle is unusually large for the town, as in 1390 the daimyo of the Mitosaka clan, as a showcase of his wealth and power, paid the dowry for his daughter's wedding by designing one of the most splendid fortifications ever seen in central Etchu. While the castle is almost a century old now, and less glorious than it once was, it is more than capable of protecting Atsushi without being too large to protect with the somewhat limited resources of the Kiku.

Founding Date

1237 of the Era of Jade

Alternative Names

Kiku Castle

Type

Castle

Parent Location

Atsushi

Owning Organization

Clan Kiku

The castle has been the site of several battles throughout its long history
1266 - the Battle of Atsushi
The first action the castle was a part of was a ferocious defense by Kiku Matsunoshi. While the castle was little more than a hillfort in those days, Matsunoshi and his 70 samurai retainers stood their ground against an immense Hobgoblin warhost for over seven months. When reinforcements finally arrived, Matsunoshi sounded a horn and he and his retainers charged out of the castle to join the battle. Tragically, he was slain by the Hobgoblin warlord Gozon the Bull at the very foot of his own castle, but the armies of Shinano carried the day. That evening, Matsunoshi's son Matsunaga was born, and the heroic Matsunoshi was believed to have reincarnated into the boy.
Today, Matsunoshi is revered by the Kiku Clan as the Kami protecting Atsushi Castle, and the villagers offer sacrifices to his shrine in front of where the old castle once stood.

1343 - The Graveyard of Warlords
In the early 1300s, the authority of the emperor was particularly weakened by a series of disasters and poor harvests, which caused the people of Shinano to blame the emperor for failing in his duties as the high priest. A coalition of warlords rose up in support of Prince Shugoku, the emperor's brother, and tried to depose a sitting emperor for the first time in the history of Shinano. The Kiku sided with the emperor against the prince, and so the three lords Arakawa, Kosukata, and Miyoshi marched on Atsushi Castle, looking to reduce it to cinders as a message to the others. However in the first week of the siege, a Kiku shinobi managed to assassinate all three warlords, one after the other. The army maintained the siege for another five months, but when Miyoshi's son arrived to take command of his clan's forces he too was killed. The armies of the three clans withdrew, and despite the army of the Kiku not seeing a minute of battle, they managed to decapitate three of the most dangerous western clans of the Shugoku Coalition.

1487 - The Bulwark of Etchu
During the Great Monster War, Kiku Hirokuni led the clan to its greatest heights, taking a leadership role among the Shinano lords. However, while he was discussing strategy in the capital, a great host of orcs descended upon Atsushi Castle in his absence. His brother, Kiku Yoshitsune, decided against holing up in the castle, and marched his small army out of the castle. The orcs gave chase, as he led them in circles away from the fields of Atsushi, and when Hirokuni finally arrived with the main Kiku army the two brothers crushed the orcs between their forces. A poet who watched the battle from the ramparts of the castle dubbed Yoshitsune at that time the "Bulwark of Etchu", a name which he would never use himself but which became a famous epithet for him among the other Etchu clans.