Naegi Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Gifu

Perched on Mount Takamori (about 432 m) above a bend of the Kiso River, Naegi Castle is a mountain castle (yamajiro) of rare originality: its builders incorporated enormous natural granite boulders into their stone walls and set some buildings cantilevered over the rocks. Founded by the Tōyama clan in the first half of the 16th century (local tradition gives 1526), it was lost in 1583 when Mori Nagayoshi drove out Tōyama Tomotada and his son Tomomasa, who took refuge with Tokugawa Ieyasu. In 1600, on Ieyasu's orders, Tomomasa retook the stronghold shortly before the Battle of Sekigahara; his family then ruled the small Naegi Domain for twelve generations, a rare case of a castle held almost continuously by a single lineage. Abandoned and dismantled in 1871, the site retains stone walls from several periods, the access path with its forty-eight bends and a timber lookout on the site of the keep, from which the view takes in Mount Ena and the Kiso valley. The Naegi Tōyama Historical Museum, at the foot of the site, presents its history.