Uchiyama Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Nagano

Perched on a triangular mountain rising about 150 metres, at the end of the ridges descending from the Kantō mountains, Uchiyama Castle (内山城) watched over the Uchiyama valley in Saku and the road leading to Kōzuke Province. This mountain castle is said to have been built during the Eishō era (1504-1521) by Ōi Mimasaka nyūdō Genshin, of the Ōi clan that then dominated eastern Saku. In 1546 the troops of Takeda Harunobu, the future Shingen, besieged it; Ōi Sadakiyo held out for several weeks before surrendering. The Takeda turned it into a forward base, entrusted to Oyamada Torama, who commanded it until his death in 1579, and defended it in 1548 against Murakami Yoshikiyo. After the fall of the Takeda in 1582, the fortress was taken by Yoda Nobushige, a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and abandoned in 1583. No building has survived, but the site still stretches for nearly 400 metres with its stepped terraces, dry moats and a low stone wall, reached by a trail starting from Onjō-ji temple.