A castle storehouse surrounded by hills

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Japan Heritage and the ninja
A castle storehouse surrounded by hills

Walking through the Ninja Village, one is enveloped in a strange landscape.
The landscape, surrounded by similar small hills, goes on and on, luring you into a labyrinth-like interior.
The villages are scattered around the foot of the hills, and the houses are blocked by small valleys, making it difficult to see the houses.
From the air, the complex valley landscape looks as if it is finely divided into many branches.
This unique topography was created by the erosion of the clay layer called "Ko-Biwa-ko Formation" 3 million years ago.
At the tip of a hill with a good view or at the entrance of a valley, there are always the ruins of castles, which are not stone walls but rather piled up earth and surrounded on all sides by earthen mounds about 50 meters high.
There are as many as 800 of them in Iga and Koga, making it one of Japan's most densely populated areas of castle buildings.
The reason for this appearance can be traced to the organization of the ninja.

Many castles that take advantage of the terrain have been identified in the ninja villages.
For example, castles built at the tip of a hill with a good view or at the entrance to a valley, where intruders entering the valley were constantly monitored by the castles on both sides and attacked if they made any suspicious movements, cutting off their way out like rats in a sack.
The way of fighting in a ninja village, where the defenses are strong and the offensive is difficult, comes into view.
The ninja castles, though small in size, each worked in tandem to protect the valley and were protected by huge earthen mounds and moats.

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