1,800 People Move a 360-Tonne Japanese Castle Tower by Hand
On Aug. 26, 2026, nearly 1,800 volunteers at Hirosaki Castle in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, began manually hauling the 360-tonne historic keep back toward its original foundation. The operation continued on Aug. 27, using ropes, rollers and coordinated human effort to move the historic structure about 2 meters (6.6 feet). The volunteers used ropes, rails […]
On August 26, 2026, nearly 1,800 volunteers at Hirosaki Castle in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, commenced the manual transportation of the castle's historic keep back toward its original foundation. This effort was part of a restoration project initiated in 2015, which involved moving the 360-tonne structure approximately 80 meters to create space for repairs.
The city utilized the traditional Japanese building-relocation technique, hikiya, which involves placing a structure on rollers or rails and shifting it without dismantling it. On August 27, the volunteers utilized ropes, rollers, and coordinated human effort to move the tower about 2 meters. Teams of roughly 80 people took turns pulling 30-meter ropes secured to the wooden tower, with their efforts moving the keep 1.13 meters on Saturday and an additional 1.09 meters on Sunday.
The operation concluded with the keep being returned 1.5 meters to its original position. The completion of this task is crucial for the restoration project, which aims to finish by the end of 2026. Heavy machinery will then take over to cover the remaining 73 meters, completing the move.
Written by urgent.news from Colombia One's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
