Damine Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Damine Castle, nicknamed the "Snake-Head Castle" (Jatō-jō), overlooks a mountain village of Oku-Mikawa in the town of Shitara. Built around 1470 as the residence of the Suganuma clan, it guarded the Ina road linking Mikawa to Shinano Province. Vassals of the Imagawa until Okehazama, the Suganuma then went over to the Tokugawa, and later to the Takeda when Takeda Shingen advanced into Mikawa, which deeply divided the clan. After the defeat at Nagashino in 1575, lord Suganuma Sadatada, who had followed Takeda Katsuyori, found the gates shut: his uncle Sadanao, who had joined the Oda together with the retainer Imaizumi Dōzen, refused to open them. Katsuyori had to flee further north. Sadatada later retook the castle by surprise and had Dōzen and about a hundred supporters executed. After the fall of the Takeda he withdrew to Shinano, and the castle, entrusted to another branch of the Suganuma, was abandoned in the early Edo period. The surviving terraces made it possible to reconstruct the honmaru residence, a watchtower, gates and palisades.