is a Japanese castle located in Kasama, central

Ibaraki Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,871,199 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. At the end of the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, Kasama Castle was home to a junior branch of Makino clan, ''

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 n ...

'' of Kasama Domain, but castle and domain went through many changes in clans during the early Edo period.

History

In 1205, a retainer of

Utsunomiya Yoritsuna was a Japanese samurai and ''waka'' poet of the early Kamakura period.''Britannica Kokusai Dai-hyakkajiten'' article "Utsunomiya Yoritsuna". 2007. Britannica Japan Co.''Digital Daijisen'' entr"Utsunomiya Yoritsuna" Shogakukan. Family His fathe ...

, Shioya Tomonari, moved to this area and changed his name to “Kasama”. The original Kasama Castle was completed in 1235, but little is known of the Kasama clan during the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

and subsequent

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

. However, in 1591, Kasama Tsunaie refused the summons of his overlord, the Utsunomiya, to join his forces against the Later Hōjō clan at the Battle of Odawara and was dispossessed of his castle. A retainer of the Utsunomiya, Tamanyu Katsumasa initially replaced the Kasama, but in 1598 the castle was taken by Gamo Satonari as part of a 30,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about . It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One ''gō'' is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied ...

'' domain. He made many modifications to modernize its layout. Following the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu prefecture, Japan, at the end of ...

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow ...

assigned the castle to

Matsudaira Yasushige was a Japanese samurai of the Azuchi-Momoyama through early Edo periods. He was the family head of the Matsui-Matsudaira, a family which received the Matsudaira name as an honorific following his father's service to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Yasushige e ...

in 1601. As the headquarters of Kasama Domain under the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

, the castle was passed to the Ogasawara clan, Toda- Matsudaira clan, Nagai clan, Asano clan, Inoue clan, Honjo clan, Inoue clan (again), before coming into the hands of the Makino clan in 1747, who subsequently remained in residence at Kasama 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 practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

The castle

Kasama Castle is rare among the

Sengoku Period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

mountaintop castles because it lasted through the Edo Period without being abandoned, moved or entirely rebuilt. The castle consisted of Main and

donjon A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in c ...

enclosure on the two adjacent peaks of Mount Sashiro, and with the Second and Third enclosure at the foot of the mountain. The extensive use of stonework is also unusual for the Kantō region Little remains of the castle today except for some stonework, one reconstructed ''

yagura Yagura may refer to: * Yagura castle * Yagura opening * Yagura (tombs) * Yagura (tower) is the Japanese word for "tower", "turret", "keep", or "scaffold". The word is most often seen in reference to structures in Japanese castle compounds bu ...

'' turret & two reconstructed gates.

Literature

* * * *

External links

Kasama Castle Jcastle Profile
{{Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles Castles in Ibaraki Prefecture Hitachi Province Kasama, Ibaraki