Kutsukake Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Kutsukake Castle, in Toyoake, controlled the junction of the old Kamakura road and the road to Nagakute. This lowland castle, probably founded in the Ōei era (1394-1428) by the Kondō clan, is famous as the place where, according to tradition, Imagawa Yoshimoto spent the night before the battle of Okehazama in 1560: it was on the way from here towards Ōtaka that the Imagawa lord was surprised and killed by Oda Nobunaga. Its lord Kondō Kageharu, who had sided with the Oda after 1540, later went over to the Imagawa, who took the castle in hand. Probably abandoned in the early 17th century, when the main road was moved towards the coast, the site was excavated from 1981 to 1986: earthworks, buildings on foundation stones, older post-built structures, wells and ponds, as well as inscribed wooden tablets (mokkan). Laid out as a park in 1989, it preserves the honmaru, ninomaru, the Suwa enclosure and the inner moat.