Tamanawa Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Kanagawa

Tamanawa Castle stood on the hills overlooking Ōfuna, west of Kamakura. Hōjō Sōun had it built in 1512, while fighting the Miura clan, to cover his rear against the Uesugi of Musashi. Linked to Sagami Bay by the Kashio River, it also served as a naval base and protected Kamakura. Entrusted to a cadet branch of the Hōjō, the Tamanawa Hōjō (Ujitoki, Tamemasa, Tsunashige, Ujishige, Ujitoshi and then Ujikatsu), it repelled the Satomi in 1526 and was not taken by Uesugi Kenshin, who surrounded it in 1561 without launching an assault. In 1590, during the Odawara campaign, Hōjō Ujikatsu handed it over without a fight to the troops of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Held afterwards by Tokugawa vassals, the castle was dismantled in 1619, while a jin'ya was set up at the foot of the hill for the small Tamanawa domain. Urban development in the 1960s destroyed most of the remains; the heart of the site now belongs to Seisen Jogakuin school, and only a few moats and earthen ramparts survive, recalled by the small history room at Ryūhō-ji temple.