Ōgyū Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture d'Aichi

Ōgyū Castle crowns a hill about 200 m high in the Ōuchi district of Toyota, some three kilometres west of the village of Matsudaira, cradle of the family from which the Tokugawa descended. From the summit the view extends over the western Mikawa plain and, on clear days, as far as the Owari region. A local lord, Nagasaka Shinzaemon, raised a first fort here before Matsudaira Nobumitsu seized it. His grandson Matsudaira Norimoto, founder of the Ōgyū-Matsudaira branch, made it his base and turned it into a large mountain castle between 1507 and 1510. The stronghold controlled a road junction and a river, and remained in use until it was abandoned in 1590, when Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred to the Kantō. The wooded and fairly well preserved site shows what Japanese castles looked like before keeps and high stone walls: dry moats cut into the slope, a winding approach between boulders, walls of rough stones and a large lookout rock at the top. Above all it retains the Kitazawa mizute, a stone water structure forming a small dam and reservoir, a rarity in Japan. The castle is part of the National Historic Site of the Matsudaira clan remains.