Iwasaki Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Iwasaki Castle, on a hill in Nisshin east of Nagoya, is linked to one of the bloodiest episodes of the Komaki-Nagakute campaign. In 1584 its lord Niwa Ujitsugu had joined Tokugawa Ieyasu at Komaki, leaving the castle to his younger brother Niwa Ujishige, aged sixteen. When Ikeda Tsuneoki's army, sent to strike Okazaki, passed below the castle, the garrison of about 300 men attacked it; the castle fell and most of the defenders, Ujishige among them, were killed. The delay this imposed on Hideyoshi's troops is often presented as decisive for Ieyasu's victory at Nagakute. Held by the Niwa from the first half of the 16th century, the castle was abandoned after 1600. The site keeps fine dry moats and earthworks; excavations revealed a well and the site of a turret. The concrete keep built in 1987 is an evocation with no historical basis; it serves as an observation tower, next to a local museum and a 1910 memorial to the soldiers who fell in 1584.