Goryo Kaku

Goryokaku is the star-shaped Western-style fortress in Hakodate, completed in 1866 by the late Tokugawa shogunate and best known as the final battlefield of the Boshin War. Its five-pointed bastion plan, modeled on European trace italienne fortifications, makes it one of the most graphically distinctive sites in Japan, and from the observation tower or in the cherry-blossom season the geometry reads as a single legible figure against the surrounding moat and trees. Maeda, working from his native Hakodate, would have known the site intimately. A [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) rendering tends to lean into the formal opportunity: the angular ramparts, the moat as a continuous dark band, and seasonal foliage as a contrasting mass — a composition almost designed for block separation. The subject extends Maeda's documentation of Hakodate's particular layered history, in which Russian, French-influenced military, and indigenous Hokkaido elements share a small townscape. The print sits alongside his cathedral and harbor views as part of a sustained local series.