Scrolling through IG, I came across a post by livinginjapan mentioning that up in Hokkaido, there’s a traditional six-story Japanese castle you can buy for 10M yen or $64k USD at the current exchange rate. That’s a hair above 10k per floor.
Needless to say, I had to find out more about this place. I mean, how many other castles like this are available for sale in Japan? (Leave a comment if you do know though, I’d like to know more)
Japan’s northernmost castle
If you were to look up which castle is Japan’s northernmost, you’d stumble upon Matsumae castle. This is technically correct as that castle was built by the Matsumae clan and housed a proper feudal lord.
If however you consider a castle the building itself regardless of what it’s been used for, then Matsumae castle is superseded by Akabira Tokugawa castle further up in the northeast.
This castle, unlike most of the others across Japan, was built during Japan’s bubble economy, being completed in 1991 right after the time it burst. It was commissioned by a doll company to be used as a mixed exhibit and production facility.
Sadly as the bubble burst, this location never got to fulfill its potential as a tourist attraction. According to Japanese travel bloggers I managed to find in the 1995-1996 period, the castle was only able to attract a handful of visitors at any day of the week and the business was in bad shape.
After Kazuo Matsuzawa (The company’s third president) died, the business declined to the point that the building became dilapidated by 2007.
The castle-shaped doll factory
日本最北の城は松前城？いえいえ、実はそのはるか北の赤平市に「赤平徳川城」が存在しています。
— mimizuku@旅と廃墟と街巡り (@hopigon) October 14, 2022
高さ３０mの天守は、人形工房徳川城という節句人形製造メーカーの店舗として建設されました。完成から十数年で休業。その頃には開店閉業状態だったよう。
バブルの遺産として今も存在感を放ち続ける… pic.twitter.com/QlbTv3Erlo
During my research, I found out that Akabira Tokugawa Castle is not its official name but rather a nickname given to it by the locals. Prior to that, it was colloquially called Tokugawa Castle.
The reason it’s not officially called a castle is because despite its outer shell, the building is a doll factory with an exhibition hall on every floor.
- The ground floor had a gift shop and a doll-making demonstration workshop.
- Floors 2 and 3 were doll displays and sale areas of their general goods.
- The 4th floor was an exhibit of hina dolls and a Japanese eatery, which was only open for a short time.
- The 5th floor featured replicas of famous Sengoku warlords’ armor, like Takeda Shingen’s.
- The 6th floor has a castle tower observatory deck.
Talk about overly ambitious. For a building commissioned by an independent doll shop, you can see how it went into disrepair when the post-bubble economy came.
It’s not all roses and sunshine
Though the idea of buying a castle for less than 100k is appealing to me (and probably you too), the reality is that you couldn’t actually use it after buying it. The property’s been abandoned for years now and according to the listing agent, needs over 8M yen ($51k USD) in renovations on top of a 1.2M yen ($7.7k USD) annual property tax.
In other words, you’ll be spending double what you bought it for within the first year just to get it back to livable condition. Granted, the castle’s sale price was suspiciously cheap to begin with.
Are you willing to pay that cost to live in a town of 8700 people?
Would you though?
Knowing all that, would you buy this castle? If so, what would you do with it? Open a guesthouse? Or perhaps open a factory of your own? Certainly, at 65k USD today, it seems like a pretty attainable castle but could you afford the repairs and upkeep on it?
But more importantly, what are the odds that a former doll factory is haunted? 🤔
Not gonna lie, I like the idea of living in a castle but the math on this piece of property is the equivalent of buying a cheap BMW and ignoring that maintenance costs exist. Maybe when I move up a few tax brackets.
Share your thoughts in the comments, this is a fun scenario to hypothesize. How would you work and fix up the place if you were to buy this castle and move there? Certainly it would be an incredible tourism revitalization project if one had the funds to buy, renovate and promote this castle to potential tourists.
Hopefully whoever buys it next does it justice.
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