Matsumae Domain Hekiriji Jinya Site

Matsumae Domain Hekirichi Jin'ya: Japan's First Star Fort

On a low rise about five kilometres inland from Hakodate Bay, the ground has been cut and banked into the shape of a four-pointed star. Grass-covered earthen walls stand roughly three metres high, a dry ditch of similar depth runs along their base, and one corner pushes out toward the east like the head of a turtle. This is the site of the Hekirichi Jin'ya, the fortified headquarters that the Matsumae Domain completed in 1855.

What makes the place unusual is its plan. The Hekirichi Jin'ya was the first fortification in Japan laid out on European bastion principles, the angled-wall geometry that engineers in the West had spent centuries refining against cannon fire. Goryōkaku, the larger five-pointed fort in Hakodate that most visitors know, did not break ground until 1857. By that measure the quiet earthwork here in Hokuto is the elder of the two.

Why a Domain Built a Western Fort in the North

The opening of Hakodate to foreign ships in the 1850s changed the calculus of defence for the whole northern frontier. In 1855 the Edo shogunate took the territory of Ezo (present-day Hokkaido) back under its direct control and divided responsibility for guarding it among several northern domains. The Matsumae Domain drew the assignment of watching over the Hakodate plain, the approach to the new port and to the shogunate's local magistrate's office.

The man who designed their answer was Fujiwara Jūta, a Matsumae retainer who had studied Western military science at the Gogatsu-juku, the school run by the scholar Sakuma Shōzan. Rather than build a conventional castle, Fujiwara applied the bastion theory he had read about. The result was a compact star with a single projecting bastion at its eastern corner, fitted with six gun positions that looked out over the open plain. Behind the fort to the west lay hills, to the south the sea; the cannon were aimed at the one direction from which a land attack was likely.

Inside the walls stood seventeen buildings, and records suggest that somewhere between 120 and 160 Matsumae samurai were stationed here. The name Hekirichi comes from the river that runs past the western side, and is thought to derive from the Ainu words peker-pet, meaning a bright or clear river.

Recognised as a National Historic Site

For two centuries Japan had been largely at peace, and its great castles were built for a style of warfare that predated the heavy use of artillery. The bastion fort was a different idea entirely: low, angled walls that let defenders sweep every approach with crossfire and left no blind corner for an attacker to shelter in. Hekirichi was the first place in Japan where that European thinking was carried out in earth and stone.

That distinction, together with the good condition of the surviving earthworks, led the national government to designate the site in March 1965. The core star-shaped rampart was protected first, and further sections were added in later designations. Excavation and study have continued into recent years, and the Hokuto City museum has been re-examining the fort's design and publishing its findings since 2018.

What to Look For on a Visit

The star and its single bastion

The shape reads most clearly from the air, which is why the south exit of nearby Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Station has a flowerbed laid out in the fort's outline. On the ground, walk to the eastern corner where the bastion juts forward. This is where the six guns were placed, and standing there you can see how the angle of the walls would have let defenders fire along the face of the ramparts rather than straight ahead.

Ramparts and dry moats

The earthen walls and the dry ditch below them survive close to their original profile, around three metres in each dimension. A path follows the perimeter, and the circuit gives a real sense of the enclosure that 120-odd men once held. Foundation stones set into the grass mark where the seventeen buildings stood.

The reconstructed gates

Two gates have been rebuilt on their original footings as part of the park's restoration, finished in 2001: a main gate at the front entrance and a rear gate behind. They are reasoned reconstructions rather than surviving originals, and they help a visitor read the layout that the bare earthworks alone would leave to the imagination.

The cherry tunnel

The approach road is lined for about 800 metres with cherry trees that arch overhead into a continuous canopy. They were planted in the early twentieth century by a Hakodate kimono merchant to mark Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Most are Somei-yoshino, but the plaza in front of the fort also holds less common varieties, including a salt-wind-hardy double cherry bred locally and a pale yellow-green cultivar called Gyoikō. The site is one of southern Hokkaido's best-loved spots for blossom.

Planning Your Visit

The grounds are an open historic park with no admission charge, and you can walk the ramparts freely. Because Hokuto sits a little inland and higher than Hakodate, the cherries here tend to peak slightly later than in the city, usually from late April into the first days of May. During the Hokuto blossom season the town runs events along its cherry route, and the trees are sometimes lit in the evening, though the lighting is not held every year, so it is worth checking current information before an evening trip.

The nearest rail hub is Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Station, the Hokkaido Shinkansen stop, from which the fort is roughly a twelve-minute taxi ride. By car it is about nine minutes from the Hokuto-Chūō interchange on the Hakodate-Esashi Expressway. The site is also reachable from Kamiiso Station on the Donan Isaribi Railway, about four kilometres away.

The Fort's Last Days and the Area Around It

The Hekirichi Jin'ya saw action only once. During the Hakodate War of 1868, the final episode of the Boshin conflict, forces of the former shogunate landed in Ezo and pushed toward the plain. The Matsumae garrison was outmatched, and rather than let the fort fall intact the defenders set their own seventeen buildings alight and withdrew toward Matsumae Castle. The earthworks you walk today are what remained after that fire.

Visitors often pair the site with Goryōkaku in Hakodate, its larger and better-known successor, which gives a useful sense of how the bastion idea was scaled up. Closer at hand, the surrounding Hokuto cherry route links several blossom spots, among them the centuries-old weeping cherry at Hōki-ji temple and the long rows of trees along the Ōno River. The region is also the gateway toward the Trappist monastery and the road on to Matsumae.