Suggestions that massive build-up of human excrement prompted the surrender of a besieged castle during a 19th century conflict has got the Fukushima Prefecture city of Aizuwakamatsu feeling shitty, according to Shukan Post (4/18).

Aizuwakamatsu Castle was one of the last holdouts of the Shogunate forces during what the Japanese call the Boshin War, the conflict between the feudal Shogun warlords trying to maintain the status quo and the Imperial forces aiming to restore the Emperor's rule during the 1860s and 1870s.

The defenders of the besieged Aizuwakamatsu Castle (also known as Tsuruga Castle) have long been held highly as heroic, valiant fighters, pitted against overwhelmingly powerful foes in a fight they were doomed to lose.

But a TBS quiz show aired on TV on Feb. 16 said the real reason the castle was surrendered to Imperial forces was because the defenders had literally stunk themselves out of the place through a sickening accumulation of human feces and urine.

Seething Aizuwakamatsu residents flooded the city with complaints after the show was aired and urged it to formally protest against the TBS show. Local politicians got in on the act, and late last month the City of Aizuwakamatsu and its official tourist board, the Aizuwakamatsu Kanko Bussan Kyokai, sent a letter of protest to TBS and the production company that made the quiz show.

On March 31, two representatives of the TV network visited Aizuwakamatsu Mayor Ichiro Kanke and formally apologized for misleading viewers. But TBS refused to accede to the city's request to broadcast an apology or even a correction.

"It was a one-off show, so those kinds of steps won't be possible," a TBS spokesman says.

Mayor Kanke says Aizuwakamatsu was on to the network before it even showed the misleading program.

"On Feb. 16, the tourist board received a letter from a TV production company, asking how many toilets the castle had at the time of the Boshin War. When tourist board officials contacted the company and asked why they wanted to know that, the company said it was because they wanted to do a show that said the castle's defenders surrendered because they were overwhelmed by their own waste."

"Right at that moment, the board protested with the company, telling it that they couldn't put on a TV show saying that sort of thing," the mayor tells Shukan Post. "But the company said recording of the show had already finished and it was too late to change anything. The city subsequently requested on numerous occasions for the program's contents to be altered, but ultimately the show went to air without any changes made to it."

Kanke is furious at what he feels is a slur on the name of those who fought for the castle.

"The real reason why the defenders handed over the castle was because the war was going badly, their allies had surrendered and there was no hope of reinforcement or relief. They had been besieged for a long time, were short of supplies and casualties were building up. Considering Bushido regarded surrender as shameful, the decision to give up the castle has enormous historical significance," Kanke tells Shukan Post.

"When you think about the spirits of our ancestors who fought with all their lives to defend the castle under tragic circumstances, suggesting that they gave in because the smell of shit and piss had become unbearable is absolutely impermissible." (By Ryann Connell)