更新日：2024年1月5日

Ieyasu Tokugawa’s Reign Over Hamamatsu Castle 4

Archaeological excavations show us a dry moat which isn’t illustrated on the castle plans from the Edo period

4. Excavation of the moat

Characteristics

The size of the moat was 9.7 meters wide and 1.7 meters deep.

Taking into account the amount of ground that was removed since the modern era, the original moat is assumed to have been 3 meters deep.

It is clear that the moat was made of soil because there were no stone walls on the slope.

Strata cross-section

The lowest layer of the moat had traces of water immersion and it was composed of a lot of plant fragments which had not decomposed completely.

In the upper layer, we have found that there was a layer of earth which seemed to have been artificially put there and the part near the surface was leveled using the same high-quality soil as the hills.

It is thought that the moat was originally filled with water but due to the changes in the castle’s layout, it was refilled with soil.

Age

Earthenware and Ceramic ware were excavated from the artificially filled layer and leveled layer above.

The finds have been dated back to around the 1560s and shows that the moat must have been abandoned during the warring states era.

Ieyasu began construction of the castle in 1570 (1st year of the Genki era) and after that intensively renovated the castle on a larger scale in 1578 (6th year of Tensho era).