Hachiōji Castle Ruins

On Mount Fukasawa, on the western edge of metropolitan Tokyo, lie the ruins of one of the largest castles of the Late Hōjō clan. Hōjō Ujiteru, younger brother of the clan head Ujimasa, began building it in the late 1570s or early 1580s to guard the roads from Kai Province into the Kantō plain, after his older castle at Takiyama had nearly fallen to the Takeda. He moved his seat there around 1587. Stone-faced terraces, a drawbridge across a dry moat and a hillside residence compound, the Goshuden, sat below a small summit keep.

The castle was still unfinished when Toyotomi Hideyoshi moved against the Hōjō in 1590. Ujiteru took most of his fighting men to defend the main Hōjō castle at Odawara, leaving behind a small garrison together with many peasants, women and children. A detached Toyotomi army under Maeda Toshiie and Uesugi Kagekatsu attacked at dawn on the 23rd day of the sixth month of 1590 (24 July in the modern calendar), and Hachiōji fell before nightfall. News of its fall helped persuade Odawara to surrender; Ujiteru was ordered to take his own life, and Tokugawa Ieyasu later had the castle dismantled.

The ghost story is rooted in that day. Local tradition holds that many of the women of the castle took their own lives at the Goshuden waterfall on the Shiroyama River rather than be captured, and that the stream ran red for three days and nights. Histories of the site say the hill was long left abandoned afterwards because people believed it haunted. Modern ghost writers and TV crews have made the waterfall one of Tokyo’s most famous shinrei supotto (spirit spots), and the anniversary of the fall is said to be when activity peaks.

The ruins were designated a National Historic Site in 1951, excavation followed, and in 1990 part of the stonework, the bridge and the Goshuden gateway were restored. Today a guidance centre at the foot of the hill explains the castle’s history, and hiking trails climb to the summit. Hachiōji’s city education board, which manages the ruins, presents the fall as a local tragedy, and visitors are asked to treat the site as a place where real people died.

Rumours collected by writers include armoured warriors and a woman in white near the waterfall, and visitors describe the sound of horses, armour and battle cries in the woods, women’s voices or weeping near the waterfall, figures in old-style dress, sudden heaviness or nausea, and photographs with strange shapes. A 2019 Shūkan Josei feature quoted ghost-story performer Tanishi Matsubara, who said a companion behaved strangely during a visit. All the reports are anecdotal.

Most stories centre on the Goshuden-no-taki waterfall below the restored residence compound, the Hikibashi bridge and the Goshuden gate, and the wooded trail to the summit. The traditional anniversary of the fall – the 23rd day of the sixth lunar month, or late July – is when reports are said to increase.

Hachiōji Castle is a mainstay of Japanese summer ghost specials, ghost-story books and YouTube channels, and it is often listed alongside Tokyo’s other famous spirit spots. It is also one of the Japan Castle Foundation’s 100 Fine Castles of Japan (2006), popular with history fans who collect castle stamps.