Site of the Miyanaga Villa

When Tachibana Muneshige, the first lord of the Yanagawa Domain, took over Yanagawa Castle in 1587, his wife Ginchiyo took up residence in a villa in Miyanaga in the castle town below. Hence the residence became known as the Miyanaga Villa. Ginchiyo was born in 1569 to Bekki Dosetsu and Nishihime, the daughter of Monchujo Akitoyo. In 1575, at the tender age of seven, Dosetsu bequeathed Tachibana Castle in Chikuzen Province to her. When she married Takahashi Munetora (later, Tachibana Muneshige), the eldest biological son of Takahashi Shoun, she moved to Yanagawa with him. Although the exact location is unknown, the Miyanaga Villa is said to have been in this vicinity. It is unclear why Muneshige and Ginchiyo lived separately, but one theory is that rather than some problem between the couple, there was opposition between the supporters of Ginchiyo’s father Bekki Dosetsu, who wanted her to be his successor, and the supporters of Muneshige. 　She lived in the villa until 1600, when Muneshige was stripped of his title and holdings as a result of the Battle of Sekigahara, after which she was put under the protection of Kato Kiyomasa and moved to the village of Haraka in Higo (now Nagasu Town in Kumamoto).