is a

Japanese castle are fortresses constructed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries and came into their best-known form in the 16th century. Castles in Japan were built to guard important or strategic sites, such a ...

located in Iwatsuki-ku, Saitama, in

Saitama Prefecture is a Landlocked country, landlocked Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Saitama Prefecture has a population of 7,338,536 (January 1, 2020) and has a geographic area of 3,797 Square kilometre, km2 ( ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. At the end of the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, Tateyama Castle was home to the

Ōoka clan The were a ''samurai'' kin group which rose to prominence in the Edo period. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, the Ōoka, as hereditary vassals of the Tokugawa clan, were classified as one of the '' fudai'' ''daimyō'' clans.Appert, Georges. (1888) ...

, ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

'' of Iwatsuki Domain, however the castle dates from the

Muromachi period The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...

and was inhabited by many samurai lords over its history. During the Edo period, the name of the castle was written as “岩付城”. It was also known as or . The site of the castle is a Saitama Prefectural Historic Monument.

Situation

The castle was located in the

Kantō Plain The , in the Kantō region of central Honshu, is the largest plain in Japan. Its 17,000 km2 covers more than half of the region extending over Tokyo, Saitama Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture, Gunma Prefecture, Tochigi Prefe ...

near the northern border of former

Musashi Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan, which today comprises Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, most of Saitama Prefecture and part of Kanagawa Prefecture. It was sometimes called . The province encompassed Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Kawasaki and Yokohama. ...

, and made use of a bend in the former location of the Arakawa River as part of its defenses to the north and east, and a swamp to the west and south. Large scale anti-flood construction diverted the main flow of the Arakawa River in the mid-Edo period, and the current location of the castle is some distance from the modern-day river. The main bailey, second enclosure and third enclosure were surrounded by very wide swampy moats, with the

castle town A castle town is a settlement built adjacent to or surrounding a castle. Castle towns were common in Medieval Europe. Some examples include small towns like Alnwick and Arundel, which are still dominated by their castles. In Western Europe, ...

located to the southwest.

History

The castle was built in the early Muromachi period by Narita Jikosai Tosho. For a long time it was believed the castle was built by Ōta Dōkan. But new source was found and it turns out that the castle was built by Narita Jikosai Tosho. In 1478 to protect the southern frontier of the Kantō kubō. In any event, the Ōta clan was firmly ensconced at Iwatsuki by 1522, and changed their allegiance to the increasingly powerful Odawara Hōjō following the Siege of Kawagoe Castle in 1546, which all but destroyed Uesugi power in the

Kantō region The is a geography, geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures of Japan, prefectures: Chiba Prefecture, Chiba, Gunma Prefe ...

. However, when

Uesugi Kenshin , later known as , was a Japanese ''daimyō'' (magnate). He was born in Nagao clan, and after adoption into the Uesugi clan, ruled Echigo Province in the Sengoku period of Japan. He was one of the most powerful ''daimyō'' of the Sengoku period ...

invaded the Kantō area from the north in 1560, Ōta Sukemasa switched back his allegiance to the Uesugi. However, in 1561 Kenshin withdraw his armies, the Odawara Hōjō quickly regained their lost territories. Ōta Sukemasa refused to submit, and in 1564 called upon the Satomi clan for assistance. However, in his absence, his son Ōta Ujitsuke betrayed him and surrendered Iwatsuki Castle to the Odawara Hōjō. Following the death of Ōta Ujitsuke in 1567, the Odawara Hōjō requisitioned Iwatsuki Castle for their own use, and rebuilt the defenses extensively with a huge system of earthen walls and deep moats enclosing an area of over a square kilometer as one of the largest and most powerful strongholds in

. A brother of

Hōjō Ujinao was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the late Sengoku period, and the final head of the Later Hōjō clan. An important figure in the history of Azuchi–Momoyama politics, he lost his entire domain following the Siege of Odawara (1590). Despite t ...

was made castellan, followed by his brother Ujifusa in 1585. However, in 1590 during the Battle of Odawara,

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

dispatched an army of 20,000 men, who quickly overwhelmed the 2000 defenders of the castle. Iwatsuki then came under the control of

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

, who assigned the 20,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'' Iwatsuki Domain to one of his most trusted retainers, Kōriki Kiyonaga. Over the next 100 years, the domain came under the control of a large number of ''

fudai daimyō was a class of ''daimyō'' (大名) in the Tokugawa Shogunate (徳川幕府) of Japan who were hereditary vassals of the Tokugawa before the Battle of Sekigahara. ''Fudai daimyō'' and their descendants filled the ranks of the Tokugawa admin ...

'' clans, including the Aoyama, Abe, Itakura, Toda, Matsudaira, Ogasawara and Nagai clans before coming under the rule of the

, who held the domain until the

Meiji restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

. In 1775, a great fire under the time of Ōoka Tadayoshi destroyed the castle and most of the surrounding town. The central donjon of the castle again burned down in 1865 and Ōoka Tadayuki lacked the financial capacity to rebuild it. The Ōoka clan sided with the pro-imperial forces in the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a coalition seeking to seize political power in the name of the Impe ...

. Following the Meiji restoration, most of the castle structures were dismantled, and through land reclamation much of the former castle area is now covered by the modern city. The remaining, mostly marshy areas are now the Iwatsuki Castle Park, which contains some remnants of the earthen works and moats, as well as two of the original gates of the castle which were preserved by private owners, and relocated to their present locations. The park is a noted venue for

sakura The cherry blossom, or sakura, is the flower of trees in ''Prunus'' subgenus '' Cerasus''. ''Sakura'' usually refers to flowers of ornamental cherry trees, such as cultivars of ''Prunus serrulata'', not trees grown for their fruit (although ...

blossoms in spring.

Literature

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References

External links

Iwatsuki Castle Jcastle Profile
{{Authority control Castles in Saitama Prefecture Abe clan Fujii-Matsudaira clan Go-Hōjō clan Itakura clan Ogasawara clan Ōta clan Uesugi clan Former castles in Japan Ruined castles in Japan Designated historic sites of Saitama Prefecture