PROMINENT POLITlCAL AND LITERARY
FIGURES VISITED
TAGAJO
The name Tagajo was first
seen in a document written in
737 A . D. It is thus believed that
the castle was built sometime
before that year. Afterwards it
began to serve both as a provincial
office and as a military
headquarters in the drive to conquer
the indigenous rebels of the
region .
Tagajo was burned down in a
revolt which took place in 780,
but was soon reconstructed .
After the headquarters was
transferred to late in 802 under the
orders of general Tamuramaro
Sakanoue, it served only as a
provincial office .
Yoritomo
Minamoto, the Shogun at that
time, made a stop over there
when he was on an expedition to
conquer the Fujiwara family in
Hiraizumi. Tagajo was used as
a local imperial branch office in
later years, but gradually fell
into ruin .
In 1689, Basho Matsuo, one
of Japan's best-known poets,
made a walking journey to the
north=eastern part of the country.
After taking a long and
tiring route, he arrived at Tagajo
and found a monument standing
in its ruins. He wrote in his
travel diary entitled the Narrow
Road to the Deep North that in
this everchanging world, it was
nothing short of a miracle that
this monument alone had survived
the battering of a thousand
years to remain as the living
memory of the ancients.
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