Koyama Castle (Kai)

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Yamanashi

In the southeast of the Kōfu Basin, on an alluvial terrace overlooking the Tegawa River, Koyama Castle controlled the roads linking Kai Province to Suruga, notably the Kamakura road over the Misaka Pass. Its founding is undated, but the Kai Kokushi chronicle records it as early as 1450 in the hands of a branch of the Anayama clan, then in conflict with the governor Takeda Nobushige. In 1523 its lord, Anayama Iyo-no-kami, defeated by a force that had come down from the Torisaka Pass, withdrew into the stronghold and then took his own life at Jōraku-ji temple. The castle regained a role in 1582, during the Tenshō-Jingo war: facing the Hōjō, who were fortifying the Misaka Pass, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered his retainer Torii Mototada to restore it. Now laid out as a park and designated a historic site by Fuefuki City, it preserves an almost intact circuit of earthen ramparts, rare for a medieval castle, lined with some hundred cherry trees that draw many visitors in spring.