Japan enlisted the help of approximately 1,800 volunteers over the weekend of August 23-24, 2026, to pull large ropes attached to the 360-tonne keep of Hirosaki Castle in Aomori Prefecture. This effort was part of a renovation project to move the keep more than six feet back into its original position, inch by inch, following repairs to a wall damaged during a major earthquake.

The keep, a fortified tower within the castle, was moved using hikiya, an ancient Japanese moving technique. The wall has since been rebuilt with all 2,185 stones returned to their original places.

Kensuke Hayasaka, head of the parks and green spaces division in Hirosaki City, told The Guardian that there were about 8,000 applications for the 1,800 available volunteer slots, making the event roughly four times oversubscribed. Volunteers came not only from Hirosaki City but also from across Japan and overseas, including Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America.

The manual pulling of the castle keep is expected to continue through the end of August 2026, with about 4,100 people scheduled to move it a total of more than 16 feet.

Historically, the Hirosaki Castle keep was originally a five-story tower but was destroyed by a lightning strike in 1627, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Many Japanese castles were dismantled after the end of the Samurai era in 1868 or destroyed during World War II.

Volunteers pulling Hirosaki Castle keep

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