Hiraka

Hiraka lay in southern Tsugaru, on routes entering the plain from Kazuno and Hinai. Daikōji Castle occupied a slight rise beside the Rokuga River, giving this district a fortified centre at the inland gateway. By the 1530s it appears to have come under Nanbu control; a regional list compiled around 1546 associates Hiraka with a Nanbu lord at Daikōji.

Around 1574–1576, Ōura Tamenobu attacked the castle twice, and its commander Takimoto Shigeyuki is said to have withdrawn toward Nanbu territory. The struggles belonged to Tamenobu's consolidation of Tsugaru. He placed his son-in-law Takehiro at Daikōji in 1599, but a succession dispute led to Takehiro's expulsion in 1609. In 1610 the castle was dismantled as work proceeded on Hirosaki Castle, with its materials reused in the new construction. Hiraka's former stronghold thus supplied part of the fabric of the domain's new political centre.