270px, Surviving gate of Oshi Castle 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 ...

located in

Gyōda is a city located in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 80,236 in 40,482 households and a population density of 1200 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Gyōda is located in north-centr ...

Saitama Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Saitama Prefecture has a population of 7,338,536 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 3,797 km2 (1,466 sq mi). Saitama Prefecture borders Tochigi Prefecture ...

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 ...

. During 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 ...

, Oshi Castle was the center of the 100,000 ''

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 ...

Oshi Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Musashi Province (modern-day Saitama Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Oshi Castle in what is now part of the city of Gyōda, Saitama. History Oshi Castle was ...

, but the castle is far better known for its association with the

siege of Oshi The 1590 was one of many battles in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's campaigns against the Hōjō clan during Japan's Sengoku period. Background Oshi Castle was a stronghold of the Narita clan in north-central Musashi Province. The Narita were originally ...

during the late

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 ...

. The castle was also known as or . It was regarded as one of the seven main strongholds of the

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

History

Oshi Castle was completed by Narita Akiyasu around 1479. The Narita family ruled over the area of Gyōda for initially as vassals to the Ogigayatsu

Uesugi clan The is a Japanese samurai clan which was at its peak one of the most powerful during the Muromachi and Sengoku periods (14th to 17th centuries). Appert, Georges. (1888) ''Ancien Japon,'' p. 79./ref> At its height, the clan had three main branch ...

, changing their allegiance to Odawara Hōjō clan in 1546. The castle town was burned down by

Uesugi Kenshin , later known as was a Japanese ''daimyō''. 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. Known as ...

in 1574. The castle made use of marshes and swamplands in its surroundings and was considered impregnable. In 1590,

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

dispatched

Ishida Mitsunari Ishida Mitsunari (, 1559 – November 6, 1600) was a Japanese samurai and military commander of the late Sengoku period of Japan. He is probably best remembered as the commander of the Western army in the Battle of Sekigahara following the A ...

with an army of 23,000 troops to seize the castle. In the

, the castle’s 619 samurai and 2000 local conscripts held off numerous attacks, including a copy-cat effort to flood the defenders out patterned after Hideyoshi’s famous

siege of Takamatsu In the 1582 , Toyotomi Hideyoshi laid siege to Takamatsu Castle, which was controlled by the Mōri clan. He diverted a nearby river with dikes to surround and flood the castle. He also constructed towers on barges from which his gunmen could ...

. Despite Mitsunari’s impressive construction of 28 kilometers of dikes and torrential rains, the castle still held and its defenders only surrendered after receiving word that their overlords had been defeated in the siege of Odawara. The area came under the control 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 ...

and the castle was subsequently rebuilt as the center of the 100,000 ''koku''

ruled by a succession of daimyō from various branches of the

Matsudaira clan The was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of th ...

and the

Abe clan The was one of the oldest of the major Japanese clans (''uji''); and the clan retained its prominence during the Sengoku period and the Edo period.Meyer, Eva-Maria"Gouverneure von Kyôto in der Edo-Zeit." Universität Tübingen (in German). The ...

. The castle town prospered during the Edo period from its proximity to the

Nakasendō The , also called the ,Richard Lane, ''Images from the Floating World'' (1978) Chartwell, Secaucus ; pg. 285 was one of the five routes of the Edo period, and one of the two that connected Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to Kyoto in Japan. There were 6 ...

highway, and location on the

Tone River The is a river in the Kantō region of Japan. It is in length (the second longest in Japan after the Shinano) and has a drainage area of (the largest in Japan). It is nicknamed Bandō Tarō (); ''Bandō'' is an obsolete alias of the Kantō ...

. Following 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 ...

, all of the structures of the castle were destroyed and its site turned into a public park. The current ''donjon'' was reconstructed in 1988 to boost local tourism and to function as the .

Literature

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External links

Oshi Castle Jcastle Profile
{{Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles Castles in Saitama Prefecture Museums in Saitama Prefecture History museums in Japan Gyōda Go-Hōjō clan