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 ...

in Shizuoka City,

Shizuoka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,555,818 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Pref ...

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 ...

. The sobriquet of this feudal fortress was the "Castle of the Floating Isle".Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
Shizuoka
It was also referred to as or .

History

During 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 ...

, the

Imagawa clan was a Japanese samurai clan that claimed descent from the Seiwa Genji by way of the Kawachi Genji. It was a branch of the Minamoto clan by the Ashikaga clan. Origins Ashikaga Kuniuji, grandson of Ashikaga Yoshiuji, established himself in ...

ruled

Suruga Province was an Provinces of Japan, old province in the area that is today the central part of Shizuoka Prefecture. Suruga bordered on Izu Province, Izu, Kai Province, Kai, Sagami Province, Sagami, Shinano Province, Shinano, and Tōtōmi Province, Tōtōm ...

from their base at Sunpu (modern-day Shizuoka City). It is not certain exactly when an Imagawa Sunpu castle was built on this site.

Tokugawa Ieyasu

After Imagawa Yoshimoto was defeated at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560, Suruga Province passed to the

Takeda clan The was a Japanese samurai clan active from the late Heian period until the late 16th century. The clan was historically based in Kai Province in present-day Yamanashi Prefecture. The clan reached its greatest influence under the rule of Taked ...

, and then to

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 had spent his youth in Sunpu as Yoshimoto's hostage. In 1585, Ieyasu constructed a new Sunpu Castle on the approximate site of the former fortified Imagawa residence. He took up residence at the castle in 1586, along with his favored consort,

Lady Saigō Lady Saigō ( or '; 1552 – 1 July 1589), also known as Oai, was one of the concubines of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the samurai lord who unified Japan at the end of the sixteenth century and then ruled as ''shōgun''. She was also the mother of the se ...

, and their two sons, Hidetada and Tadayoshi.Kobayashi and Makino (1994), p.400. Lady Saigo died at Sunpu Castle in 1589. After the defeat of the

later Hōjō clan The was one of the most powerful samurai families in Japan in the Sengoku period and held domains primarily in the Kantō region. Their last name was simply , but were called "Later Hōjō" to differentiate between the earlier Hōjō clan who h ...

at the Battle of Odawara by

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: ...

, Ieyasu was forced to change his domains in the

Tōkai region The is a subregion of the Chūbu region and Kansai region in Japan that runs along the Pacific Ocean. The name comes from the Tōkaidō, one of the Edo Five Routes. Because Tōkai is a sub-region and is not officially classified, there is ...

with the provinces of 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 ...

, and turned Sunpu Castle over to Toyotomi retainer Nakamura Kazuichi in 1590. After the defeat of the Toyotomi at the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was an important battle in Japan which occurred on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu Prefecture, ...

, Ieyasu recovered Sunpu. With the formation of the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

, Ieyasu turned the title of ''

shōgun , officially , was the title of the military rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, except during parts of the Kamak ...

'' over to his son Tokugawa Hidetada, and retired to Sunpu, where he set up a shadow government to maintain effective rule over the country from behind the scenes. As part of the Tokugawa policy to sap potential rivals of economic strength, ''

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 ...

s'' from around the country were called upon to rebuild Sumpu Castle in 1607 with a triple moat system,

keep A keep 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 castles that were fortified residen ...

and palace. When this burned down in 1610, the ''daimyōs'' were ordered to rebuild it immediately, this time with a seven-story donjon. The castle was visited by John Saris on the first English trade mission to Japan in 1613. Saris and William Adams met with Ieyasu here to exchange gifts and negotiate terms for the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

to trade with Japan.

Later Edo period

After Ieyasu's death in 1616, Sunpu Castle remained the seat of government for the surrounding Sunpu Domain, which for most of its existence was a

tenryō The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil war ...

territory governed directly by the ''shōgun'' in Edo. During this period, a series of appointed overseers were based at Sunpu Castle to serve as administrators for the region. These officials were called the or ''Sushū Rioban'', and were most often appointed from the ranks of the '' Ōbangashira''. In 1635, most of Sunpu burned down in a fire, which also consumed the buildings of Sunpu Castle. By 1638, the palace, gates, ''yagura'' and other structures were reconstructed, but notably, the donjon was not, since Sunpu was ruled by an appointed administrator, rather than by a ''daimyō''.

Modern era

After 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 ...

, the final Tokugawa ''shōgun'',

Tokugawa Yoshinobu Kazoku, Prince was the 15th and last ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He was part of a movement which aimed to reform the aging shogunate, but was ultimately unsuccessful. He resigned his position as shogun in late 1867, while ai ...

, resigned his post and moved to Sunpu in retirement. However, he was not allowed to move into Sunpu Castle, but was given the former Sunpu ''Daikansho'' offices to be his residence. His heir, Tokugawa Iesato, was briefly established as ''daimyō'' of "Shizuoka Domain" (700,000 ''

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 ...

'') in 1868 until its abolition a year later in 1869. In 1871, American educator E. Warren Clark arrived in Shizuoka to teach science. Shortly thereafter, he directed construction of an American-style house on the grounds of the former castle. In 1873, Clark left Shizuoka for Tokyo. A western-style school, the ''Shizuhatasha'' (or ''Shizuhatanoya'') was established in the house which had been built for Clark; and a Canadian missionary, Davidson McDonald, was engaged to run it. McDonald later helped establish

Aoyama Gakuin University is a private Christian university in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Originally established in 1874 by missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church, it was reconfigured in its current form in 1949 as tertiary component of the Aoyama Gakuin. The u ...

in Tokyo.Foreign Ministry of Japan
''Episodes in Japan-Canada Relations''.
/ref> The castle grounds became property of Shizuoka City from 1889. Much of the moat system was filled in, and portions of the bailey either became a park, or were used as for prefectural government offices. In 1896, a large portion of the inner castle grounds was turned over to the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

as a base for the IJA 34th Infantry Regiment. In 1949, the army base was abolished, and the area turned over to the city government, which transformed the area into "Sunpu Park". Reconstruction projects in 1989 and in 1996 recreated the Tatsumi ''Yagura'' and eastern gate.

Notes

References

* Beasley, William G. (1955)
''Select Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853–1868''.
London:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. eprinted by RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2001. ">RoutledgeCurzon.html" ;"title="eprinted by RoutledgeCurzon">eprinted by RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2001. * Cullen, Louis M. (2003)
''A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Ion, A. Hamish. (1990)
''The Cross and the Rising Sun''.
Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. * * Murdoch, James. (1926). ''A History of Japan''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co
reprinted by

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

, 1996. * Pedlar, Neil. (1990)
''The Imported Pioneers: Westerners who Helped Build Modern Japan''.
London:

Literature

* * * * * *

External links

Sumpu Castle Park official website
English) {{Authority control Castles in Shizuoka Prefecture Buildings and structures in Shizuoka (city) 100 Fine Castles of Japan