Hachioji Castle Ruins (八王子城跡)

A medieval mountain fortress carved into the slopes of Fukasawa-yama (Shiroyama), which rises 460 metres above the surrounding land. In ages past, during the Engi era, it is said that Gozu Tennō and his eight princely sons appeared before a monk deep in mountain austerities at the summit — and from that fateful encounter, the name "Hachioji" was bestowed upon the place. Into this ground of sacred origin, the blood of the Warring States would later seep without end.

In the eighteenth year of Tenshō (1590), a vast army loyal to Toyotomi swept down upon the castle, and before a single night had passed, it fell. The lord of the castle, Hōjō Ujiteru, was away at Odawara with the main force; those left to defend the walls were retainers, and women and children with nowhere left to flee. Driven to the banks of the Shiroyamagawa, they threw themselves in one after another, and the river, it is told, ran red for three days and three nights.

Even now, centuries after the castle's fall, accounts never cease of an unnatural chill that clings to the ruins of the Goshuden and the stone-paved paths along the Shiroyamagawa. There are stretches where birdsong falls utterly silent even at high noon in midsummer, and those who have visited whisper among themselves that cameras catch an unidentifiable white haze drifting through the frames.

Near the old bridge that spans the Shiroyamagawa, particularly after dark, something is heard beneath the sound of the current — a sound like the sobbing of a woman. The local saying has been passed down to this day: *even if you hear it, do not turn around.*

Beyond the boundaries of the designated historic site, a cemetery and private land interlock in a tangle, and remnants of the fortress lie tucked quietly within the surrounding residential streets. The further one moves from managed light, the more densely the memory of the castle seems to have settled, like sediment at the bottom of still water.

This mountain — born under the divine patronage of Gozu Tennō, and closed with a multitude of deaths — still holds something within it, beneath the name of the Hachioji Gongen. The gaze that visitors feel upon them is one that no one has ever moved to confirm.