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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Gavin Blair in Tokyo

Japan enlists 1,800 people to drag a 360-tonne castle keep using ropes and rollers

People pull on ropes to move the Hirosaki Castle keep in north-eastern Japan at the weekend
People pull on ropes attached to a platform carrying the Hirosaki Castle keep in north-eastern Japan at the weekend. ‘It was fantastic,’ one participant says. Photograph: Kyodo News/Getty Images

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 – had to be moved to repair a wall that was damaged in a major earthquake.

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