Kakegawa Castle: A Strategic Japanese Stronghold
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Japan
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Tokugawa, Toyotomi regime
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page17 sections
History
Kakegawa Castle is a Japanese hill castle in Japan that controlled eastern Tōtōmi Province near the Tōkaidō highway. Kakegawa had served as an important post station linking Kyoto with eastern Japan since the Heian period, giving the stronghold strategic value during the Sengoku period, an era of prolonged warfare among competing regional lords.
Imagawa Origins
The first castle was traditionally built during the Bunmei era, from 1469 to 1487, by Asahina Yasuhiro, a retainer of Imagawa Yoshitada. Yoshitada was a warlord of the Imagawa clan, and the castle helped consolidate Imagawa authority over Tōtōmi. This early stronghold stood on Nezumi-yama, northeast of the later castle site.
A new castle was constructed on Ryuto Mountain in 1513. The Asahina clan continued to govern the castle for the Imagawa through Asahina Yasunori and Asahina Yasutomo, maintaining the stronghold during a period when control of the region depended on fortified bases and their surrounding territories.
Siege and Tokugawa Control
After the Imagawa defeat at the Battle of Okehazama, Imagawa Ujizane, the successor and last head of the clan, fled from his base at Sumpu to Kakegawa Castle in 1568. Tokugawa forces besieged the castle while Tokugawa Ieyasu and Takeda Shingen, leading warlords of their respective clans, contested the surrounding region.
The defenders held out for approximately five months. Negotiations secured Ujizane’s safety, and Asahina Yasutomo surrendered the castle on 8 February 1569. Ujizane and Yasutomo withdrew to Odawara, while the Tokugawa retainers Ishikawa Ienari and his son Yasumichi became castle administrators. Kakegawa remained under Tokugawa control until the fall of the Takeda clan in 1582.
Yamauchi Reconstruction
In 1590, after Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred from the Tōkai region to the Kantō region, Kakegawa was assigned to Yamauchi Kazutoyo, a retainer of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It became the center of a domain assessed at 51,000 koku, a historical measure of agricultural production, later increased to 59,000 koku. Yamauchi substantially expanded and rebuilt the castle as an early-modern fortress, establishing the basic arrangement of its surviving layout, stonework, and moats.
The Yamauchi-period keep was destroyed by an earthquake in 1604 and rebuilt in 1621. After the Tokugawa shogunate was established, Yamauchi Kazutoyo was transferred to Kōchi on Shikoku, and Kakegawa passed to several fudai daimyō, hereditary vassal lords of the Tokugawa shoguns. Hisamatsu Sadakatsu was the first of these new lords. Rule eventually passed to seven generations of the Ōta clan, whose repeated repairs kept the castle in use.
Earthquake, Abolition, and Reconstruction
The castle continued to be maintained during the Bakumatsu, the final phase of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Ansei Tōkai Earthquake of 1854, a major earthquake in the Tōkai region, caused extensive destruction. The Ninomaru Palace, Drum Turret, Fuki Gate, and Ōte Ni-no-mon were rebuilt by 1861, while the keep and Yotsuashi Gate were not reconstructed at that time.
Following the Meiji Restoration, the political transition to imperial government that began in 1868, surviving castle buildings were used for local administrative offices. The castle was later abolished and largely dismantled during the early Meiji period. Roads and government buildings removed much of the remaining fabric.
After the site had remained largely ruined through the Shōwa period, which lasted from 1926 to 1989, the keep was reconstructed in wood in April 1994. The work used traditional construction methods and was financed through approximately one billion yen in public donations. It was the first postwar Japanese reconstruction of a keep in wood using those methods. Major repairs began in June 2022 to address peeling plaster, blackening, and the deterioration and fading of balustrades.
The Ninomaru Palace became a National Important Cultural Property in 1980. In 2006, Kakegawa Castle was selected as number 42 in the Japan Castle Foundation’s “100 Fine Castles of Japan.” Archaeological and preservation work has also extended into the former castle-town landscape, including the burial of utility lines and the creation of a castle-town-style streetscape. The site’s historical timekeeping function is recalled by an annual noon drum ceremony held on 10 June, a tradition established in 1957.
Remains
Castle Layout and Archaeological Layers
Kakegawa is a hirayama castle, a Japanese castle built on a hill or low mountain with fortified compounds spreading across adjoining lower ground. Its tiered plan centered on the Honmaru, the innermost fortified enclosure. The rear entrance lay to the west and the main entrance to the southeast. Tenshumaru stood to the north, Takenomaru farther north, Matsuo-kuruwa to the south, Ninomaru and Sannomaru to the east, and Nakanomaru to the west. An outer enclosure surrounded the southern side.
The original fortifications included stone walls, earthen ramparts, moats, and stone embankments. These survive in part, alongside reconstructed walls, moats, ramparts, gates, plaster walls, the keep, and other elements. The Honmaru was formed by filling a narrow valley that sloped southward. Excavation revealed that the valley had previously contained a medieval cemetery with stone-pile graves. Work undertaken during the keep reconstruction also uncovered a medieval staggered entrance passage and groups of large pits around a fortified enclosure.
Keep and Stone Platform
Reconstructed Keep
The original keep was built in 1590, destroyed in the 1604 earthquake, rebuilt in 1621, and destroyed again by the 1854 earthquake. Surviving drawings of the 1621 building show a three-tiered keep with board-clad upper levels, a projecting karahafu, or curved gable, on the second level, and ornamental katōmado windows, which have flame-shaped or cusped openings. A drawing made in 1851 shows damage to the stonework and earthen bank around the keep platform and preserves evidence for the keep’s pre-earthquake form.
The present keep is a three-tier, four-story wooden structure in a composite watchtower arrangement, with an irimoya roof. Its curved gable, ornamental windows, white-plastered walls, and internal arrangement were reconstructed from historical drawings and comparison with the related keep at Kōchi Castle, which Yamauchi Kazutoyo also developed. The reconstructed building has a building area of 209.00 square meters, a total floor area of 304.96 square meters, a maximum height of 16.18 meters, an eaves height of 7.88 meters, and a basement depth of 4.70 meters. It has two above-ground floors and a two-story tower section.
Traditional Japanese nails were used in the reconstruction, including 7,570 nails ranging from 2.5 to 7 sun in size. The roof carries a pair of bronze shachi, ornamental fish-shaped figures, each 1.2 meters high and weighing approximately 200 kilograms.
Keep Platform
The keep platform was built on stonework laid over fill placed partly on natural geological ground. Its south and west faces use natural and roughly split stones associated with the Yamauchi period. The stonework was relaid during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The east and north faces collapsed during the Ansei earthquake because part of the platform had been built over timber foundations. The platform stonework was dismantled in connection with the wooden keep reconstruction.
Palace and Surviving Turrets
Ninomaru Palace
The Ninomaru Palace is an Edo-period administrative and residential complex rebuilt by 1861 after the 1854 earthquake. Its original lighting and room divisions remain visible. The principal palace survives, while its kitchen, hearths, plaster walls, storehouse, three toilet rooms, work area, and well were dismantled during the Meiji period.
Drum Turret and Ōte Gate Guardhouse
The Drum Turret was moved from Sannomaru to the Honmaru and survives in its relocated position. The Ōte Gate guardhouse, built in the late Edo period, also survives as a relocated building. The Ōte Gate itself was reconstructed in wood in 1995 approximately 50 meters north of its historical position because of the modern road layout. Reconstructed sections also include the Yotsuashi Gate and portions of plaster wall.
Relocated Gates and Takenomaru Residence
Relocated Gates
The Ōte Ni-no-mon was built in 1659 and later moved to Yusan-ji Buddhist temple in Fukuroi, where it serves as the main gate. The Fuki Gate was relocated to the gate of Enman-ji in Kakegawa. Another gate of uncertain original provenance was moved to the rear gate of Ryūun-ji in Nishikata, Kikugawa.
Takenomaru Property
Takenomaru formerly contained samurai residences. After the Meiji period, the Matsumoto family, a wealthy local family, acquired the site and rebuilt its residence. The surviving property, now owned by Kakegawa City, contains a Meiji-period upper-class residence and a small garden. It was repaired in 2009 and subsequently opened as a tangible cultural property.
Historical Drum
A signal drum made in 1855 under the rule of the Ōta family was used to announce the time until the middle of the Meiji period. Its survival preserves a practical aspect of castle administration, while the annual drum ceremony continues the tradition associated with its historical timekeeping function.
