The Boshin War: Where It Was Fought and What Is Left

Aizu in a month, Hakodate at the end, and a castle that was still standing

戊辰戦争 · 1868–1869 · last checked 2026-10-27

Every other guide on this site is about a person. This one is not, because the Boshin War does not belong to anybody. Yoshinobu left it in the first month. Saigo Takamori ran part of it and then rebelled against the government it created. Katsu Kaishu ended its largest battle by arranging that it not happen. It is four men and five places and no protagonist.

It began at Toba-Fushimi, south of Kyoto, in January 1868. It ended in a star fort in Hakodate in May 1869. In between it burned a castle town in the mountains that had done nothing except stay loyal to the losing side, and that is the part you can go and stand in.

Part 1 — Aizu, which is the reason to come

Aizu backed the shogunate because its lord, Matsudaira Katamori, had been given the job of policing Kyoto and had done it. When the war turned, that made the domain the enemy, and in the autumn of 1868 the government army came over the passes and laid siege to the castle for a month.

That photograph is the single most useful thing in this article. It is the keep at Tsuruga Castle in 1868, after the siege: plaster shot off, roofs broken, and standing. The building survived the war. It was pulled down in 1874 by the Meiji government, which is a different thing from being destroyed in it, and the distinction matters because almost every English account blurs the two.

What you climb today is concrete, poured in 1965. The stone walls and the moats are real, the red-tiled roof it wears now is a 2011 restoration of what the original had, and the tea house in the grounds is a genuine survival — taken out of the castle to save it from the demolition and brought back in 1990.

Part 2 — The hill, and the thing that happened on it

Nineteen boys of the Byakkotai, the reserve unit of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, came back over Iimoriyama during the siege, saw smoke rising over the town, believed the castle had fallen, and killed themselves. The castle had not fallen. It held for most of another month.

One of them was cut down and survived, which is the only reason anybody knows what they thought they were looking at.

On the same slope is Sazaedo, which has nothing to do with the war and is worth the climb anyway: a hexagonal timber hall of 1796 built as a double helix, so that the ramp up and the ramp down never cross and nobody going up meets anybody coming down. There is nothing else like it in Japan.

Be warned what the Bukeyashiki is. The main house is a 1975 reconstruction of the chief retainer’s residence, and the room where twenty-one women and children of the household killed themselves as the army came into the town is staged with figures. It is not a subtle experience. Some of the buildings moved here from elsewhere in the domain are real.

Part 3 — Hakodate, where it actually stopped

Enomoto Takeaki took the shogunate’s fleet north, declared a republic in Hakodate in December 1868 with himself elected president, and held out in the star fort until May 1869. The fort is the best-preserved thing the war left: earthworks and a water moat laid out as a public park, free and open, with the magistrate’s hall inside rebuilt in timber in 2010 to the original drawings.

The shape only reads from above, which is what the tower next to it is for. Note that the tower’s admission changes on 1 April 2027 and the operator has not published the new figure — so any price you read for it, including in guides written this year, may be wrong by the time you go.

Part 4 — Fact and legend

Documented: the Byakkotai saw smoke, not a fallen castle. The castle held for weeks after they died. What they saw burning was the town.

Documented, and usually told backwards: the keep. It came through the siege and was demolished six years later by the new government, along with most of the castles in Japan. The war did not knock it down.

Retold, and worth being careful with: Aizu as pure victim. The domain was not a bystander; Katamori’s men had spent years policing Kyoto with a heavy hand, and the Satsuma and Choshu soldiers who came over the passes in 1868 had reasons of their own that were not invented for the occasion. The nineteen boys on Iimoriyama are still nineteen boys. Both things are true, and Aizu’s own museums are better at the first half than the second.

Not settled: the body count at Toba-Fushimi, and most other numbers in this war. Figures in English-language accounts are copied between books with more confidence than the sources support. If a number matters to you, it is worth finding out where it came from.

Part 5 — The route

Aizu-Wakamatsu is the trip. The castle, Iimoriyama and the Bukeyashiki are all inside the city and all on the same loop bus, which is two days at a comfortable pace or a long one if you must. From Tokyo it is about three hours — Shinkansen to Koriyama, then the Ban-etsu West line.

Hakodate is not part of that trip and anybody telling you otherwise has not looked at a map. Toba-Fushimi is a short train ride out of Kyoto and is mostly markers and plaques.

Check rooms in Aizu-Wakamatsu for your dates

Before you go

Tsuruga Castle: 8:30 to 17:00 all year, last entry 16:30. Four hundred and ten yen for the keep, five hundred and twenty including the tea house — take the tea house, it is the older thing.

Iimoriyama: the hill and the graves are free and open. There are 183 steps and a paid moving slope beside them. Sazaedo is four hundred yen, roughly 8:15 to sunset from April to December and 9:00 to 16:00 in winter; published hours differ between listings, so treat sunset as the limit and go in the morning.

Aizu Bukeyashiki: 8:30 to 17:00 April to November, 9:00 to 16:30 December to March. Current listings say a thousand yen for adults. The 850 yen figure still circulating is from 2017.

Goryokaku: fort and park free and open. Tower 9:00 to 18:00, last observation tickets 17:50, price changing on 1 April 2027.

The stay list below is the city, not the hot spring — Rakuten has no separate area for Higashiyama — so it mixes ryokan up the valley with business hotels in town. The picks say which is which, because the choice between them is really a choice about whether you came for the bath or for the war.