Inuyama Castle

Inuyama Castle stands on Mount Shiro, 80 meters above sea level on the south bank of the Kiso River, in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture. It is a 'ushiro-kengo' castle, protected at the back by a cliff. Its keep is of the watchtower type, with three roofs, four stories and two basement levels. It is a National Treasure, and the official site calls it the oldest surviving keep in Japan.

The castle is said to have been built around 1537 by Oda Nobuyasu, an uncle of Oda Nobunaga, who moved it from Kinoshita Castle. After Nobuyasu's death his son Nobukiyo became lord, but he defied Nobunaga and was attacked, and Ikeda Tsuneoki, Nobunaga's foster brother, entered the castle. In the Battle of Komaki and Nagakute in 1584, Ikeda Tsuneoki crossed the Kiso River into the castle, which became a base for Hashiba Hideyoshi's side. Protected by the cliff behind it, the castle sat at a hub of trade, politics and the economy, connected to the Nakasendo and Kiso roads.

In the Edo period, in 1617, Naruse Masanari, a senior retainer of the Owari Tokugawa, was given the castle by the second shogun Hidetada. The Naruse family remained lords until the end of the shogunate. The keep is said to have taken its present form through alterations in Masanari's time, and the curved gables on the north and south of the third floor and the watchtower with its railing and surrounding veranda on the fourth floor are attributed to the Naruse alterations. In other words, the keep's present exterior is not from a single period but layers the work of several.

Inside, you enter through the basement levels, called the anakura. Here you can see the stone walls and thick beams that support the keep. On the first floor a warrior's passage runs around the rooms, and the center of the second floor holds an armory with weapon racks. Outside, a turret attached to the side of the entrance was meant to attack from the flank if the entrance was about to be broken. The roof also carries a design of a peach on a turtle shell as a charm against evil. From the top-floor watchtower you look over the 'pivot of the fan' of the Nobi Plain, an alluvial fan, and nearby are the Kiso River, the old townscape of the castle town and Meiji-mura.

Its modern history is also unusual. With the abolition of domains in 1871 the castle passed to Aichi Prefecture and almost all buildings other than the keep were demolished. The 1891 Nobi Earthquake half-destroyed the keep, and in 1895 it was transferred to the Naruse family, the former lords, on condition of repair. The Naruse family and the townspeople raised donations to restore it, and it was kept as the only privately owned castle in Japan. In 2004 ownership passed to the Inuyama Castle Hakutei Bunko Foundation. It was redesignated a National Treasure in 1952, and dismantling repair was completed in 1965.