Shirakawa Barrier

The barrier is one of three built during the Nara period to mark the border between the territory controlled by the Yamato state and the Emishi tribes of the Tōhoku region of northern Honshū. The barrier served as a border fortress against excursions of the Emishi to the south, and to regulate and control traffic from the central provinces of Japan to the north,. During the early to mid-Heian period, Yamato forces gradually conquered the Emeshi, and the barrier fell into ruin as it had become redundant. It had largely vanished by the start of the Kamakura period. However, memory of the barrier was preserved as a makurakotoba in Japanese poetry, metaphorically evoking images of distance, transition and loneliness. The site was lost until the mid-Edo period, when it was rediscovered by Matsudaira Sadanobu, daimyō of Shirakawa Domain based on a study of ancient texts in the year 1800. He marked the location with a stone monument and the construction of a Shinto shrine, the Shirakawa Jinja.

The site was investigated by archaeologists from 1956 to 1963, and the remains of a dry moat, wooden palisade and earthen ramparts were uncovered.[1]

The site is now a National Historic Site, and is part of the Shirakawa Seki-no-mori Park, containing a reconstructed ancient house and preserved old farm houses.

• List of Historic Sites of Japan (Fukushima)

• Haruo Shirane (2008). Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978- 0-231-14415-5.
• Edward Kamens (1997). Utamakura: Allusion, & Intertext. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06808-5.
• Donald Keene (1999). Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese As Revealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-11437-0.

Media related to Shirakawa no Seki at Wikimedia Commons