was 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, suc ...

in what is now the city of

Yamatokōriyama is a city in Nara Prefecture, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 84,059 and 38,944 households. Geography Yamato Koriyama is located in the northern part of the Nara Basin and stretches approximately 9 km from east to west and ...

Nara Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the ...

, Japan. The

Sengoku The was a period in 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 feudal system of Japan under the Ashikaga shogunate. Variou ...

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominall ...

Tsutsui Junkei son of Tsutsui Junshō, and a ''daimyō'' of the province of Yamato. On 1571, Junkei, through the offices of Akechi Mitsuhide, pledged to service of Oda Nobunaga. Military life Early in his career, in 1565, Matsunaga Hisahide, one of the most ...

started construction of the castle, and

Toyotomi Hidenaga , formerly known as . He was a half-brother of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the most powerful and significant warlords of Japan's Sengoku period The was a period in Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 ...

made it his residence. In 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 character ...

, it became the headquarters of the Kōriyama Domain. During this time it was held by members of the

Mizuno () is a Japanese sports equipment and sportswear company, founded in Osaka in 1906 by Rihachi Mizuno. Today, Mizuno is a global corporation which makes a wide variety of sports equipment and sportswear for badminton, baseball, boxing, cyclin ...

, Okudaira Matsudaira,

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a producti ...

, Fujii Matsudaira, and

Yanagisawa clan The was a Japanese samurai clan who rose to prominence under the Edo period Tokugawa shogunate. The main branch of the clan ruled as ''daimyō'' of Yamato-Kōriyama Domain in Yamato Province (150,120 '' koku'') until the Meiji restoration, and ...

s. Today, many walls and moats are preserved in a public park in the city. The Yanagisawa Shrine stands on the grounds. The Castle was listed as one of the

Continued Top 100 Japanese Castles The is a list of 100 castles, intended as a sequel of 100 Fine Castles of Japan The castles in were chosen based on their significance in culture, history, and in their regions by the in 2006. In 2017, Japanese Castle Association created an ad ...

in 2017.

Photographs

File:Koriyama_Castle_Nara-b.jpg, '' Yagura'' File:Koriyama-Castle-M6703.jpg, Wall and moat File:Koriyama-Castle-M6717.jpg, Turret atop a stone wall File:Koriyama-Castle-M6742.jpg, Yanagisawa Bunko (library)

Access

The nearest station is Kintetsu-Kōriyama.

Sources

This article incorporates material from the articles 郡山城 (大和国) (''Kōriyama-jō (Yamato no Kuni)'') and 郡山藩 (''Kōriyama-han'') in the Japanese Wikipedia, retrieved on May 4, 2008.

Literature

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koriyama Castle Castles in Nara Prefecture Yamatokōriyama