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Goryōkaku

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is a star fort in the Japanese city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. The fortress was completed in 1866. It was the main headquarters of the short-lived Republic of Ezo.

Key facts

Military installation.name
Goryōkaku
Military installation.native_name
五稜郭
Military installation.partof
Boshin War
Military installation.nearest_town
Hakodate
Military installation.country
Japan
Military installation.built
1866
Military installation.image
Hakodate Goryokaku Panorama 1.JPG
Military installation.caption
Goryōkaku viewed from Goryōkaku Tower
Military installation.image2
Hakodate Magistrate's Office 1868.png
Military installation.caption2
Governmental hall of the Republic of Ezo
Military installation.type
Star fort
Military installation.image3
GoryokakuPlanLarge.jpg
Military installation.caption3
19th century map of Goryōkaku
Military installation.builder
Takeda Ayasaburō
Military installation.pushpin_map
Japan
Military installation.battles
Boshin War

via Wikipedia infobox

~4 min read

Encyclopedic overview

6 sections
Contents
  • History
  • Park
  • See also
  • References
  • Further reading
  • External links

is a star fort in the Japanese city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. The fortress was completed in 1866. It was the main headquarters of the short-lived Republic of Ezo.

==History== Goryōkaku was designed in 1855 by Takeda Ayasaburō, a Rangaku scholar. He studied the fortified cities of Europe in the early modern period to design a fort that could protect against battles using guns and cannons. It took nearly seven years for the construction. The fortress was completed in 1866, two years before the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate. It is shaped like a five-pointed star. This allowed for greater numbers of gun emplacements on its walls than a traditional Japanese fortress, and reduced the number of blind spots where a cannon could not fire.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Goryōkaku” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

On the map

3 mapped locations