Goryokaku Park


Goryokaku Fort is a special historical site in Hakodate City of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. It was Japan’s first and largest Western-style fort. It was built in 1866 to house government offices for the administration in Hakodate and to deal with commerce and foreign affairs related to the port of Hakodate that was opened to international trade in 1859.

It has five V-shaped projections from the central core and was named Goryokaku (Pentagram Fort) in reference to its star shape. It was designed in the shape of a star so that an assault from any direction could be met with concentrated firepower. At the entrance to the park there is an observation tower that is 50 meters high. You can get a good view of the layout of the fort from there.

Inside the tower, there were 16 dioramas and explanations that went with them to illustrate the history of the Goryokaku Fort. There is another post on this blog site you can read if you are interested. They also had a diorama of the star fort inside the tower which looked like this:




I also took a photo of the real fort and you can see the resemblance between the two photos.



 I was looking around when I went there and I saw a lot of people taking photos of the fort and also of themselves in the fort under the cherry blossom trees and in the tower with the city in the background. It seems to me that the majority of the people who go there are actually Japanese citizens from other parts of Japan who come to see the fort and there are fewer tourists from other countries that go visit it.

Katherine and I also wanted to do a poll to see how many people who go there actually know the history of the Goryokaku Fort. Even though we live in Calgary and have lived there almost all our lives, we don’t know the history of the landmarks of historical sites that are in our city, so we wanted to see if it was the same in Japan. From what we gather, it actually is the same! We found that most people who go to the fort do not know and are not really very interested in the history. They mostly go for the photos and to admire the park with their friends. An example of this is our friend Yuka-san. She has a part time job serving ice cream in the Goryokaku Tower but she does not know anything about the history of either the fort or the tower.

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