Japan enlists 1,800 people to drag a 360-tonne castle keep using ropes and rollers
After repairs to Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture, officials employed a technique known as hikiya to move the structure more than two metres To chants of “so-re, so-re”, about 1,800 people came together in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep a little more than two metres closer to its original resting place as part of ongoing renovations. The keep – a fortified tower within a castle –
Open original article- Ledger record
- #2467
- First seen
- 25 Aug 2026, 01:26 UTC
- Last checked
- 25 Aug 2026, 12:27 UTC
- Version history
- 1 version
- Current fingerprint
845d9a634b13...31704e
Publisher layer
Recorded article metadata
- Publisher
- The Guardian
- Country
- England / United Kingdom
- Source published
- 25 Aug 2026, 01:10 UTC
- Source updated
- No update timestamp supplied
- Byline
- Gavin Blair in Tokyo
- Section
- Japan
After repairs to Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture, officials employed a technique known as hikiya to move the structure more than two metres To chants of “so-re, so-re”, about 1,800 people came together in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep a little more than two metres closer to its original resting place as part of ongoing renovations. The keep – a fortified tower within a castle –
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Observed version timeline
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1
Japan enlists 1,800 people to drag a 360-tonne castle keep using ropes and rollers
After repairs to Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture, officials employed a technique known as hikiya to move the structure more than two metres To chants of “so-re, so-re”, about 1,800 people came together in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep a little more than two metres closer to its original resting place as part of ongoing renovations. The keep – a fortified tower within a castle –
Changed fieldstitlebylinedescriptionTextcontentTextsourcePublishedAtsourceUpdatedAtsectionimageUrltags- Version SHA-256
845d9a634b13...31704e- Capture SHA-256
e68debb6c7d1...a70712
Interpretation layer
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Publisher categories are copied from source metadata. Machine signals report observable wording or format and do not determine truth, intent, ethics, or wrongdoing.
- machine content-type Reported news observable-rules-v1 / 70% rule confidence
- publisher category Asia Pacific rss-category
- publisher category Japan rss-category
Public response layer
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Evidence layer
Capture provenance
- Capture ID
- #2196
- Observed
- 25 Aug 2026, 01:26 UTC
- HTTP result
- 200 / parsed
- Raw payload
- 462,196 bytes, private gzip evidence
- Collector
- news-ledger/0.1
- Public boundary
- metadata and excerpt