Arioka Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture de Hyōgo

A short walk from JR Itami Station, a grassy embankment and a wall of rough stones recall that one of the most ambitious fortresses of late sixteenth-century Kansai once stood here. Originally the residence of the Itami clan since medieval times, the stronghold was taken in 1574 by Araki Murashige, a vassal of Oda Nobunaga, who thoroughly rebuilt it and renamed it Arioka. He surrounded it with a vast enclosure that took in the town and was punctuated by outlying forts — a sogamae roughly two kilometres long. In 1578 Murashige turned against Nobunaga; the castle held out for about a year before falling in 1579, and the repression that followed struck the lord's family and entourage harshly. It was also within its walls that Kuroda Kanbei, sent as a negotiator, was held prisoner. Renamed Itami by the Ikeda, the castle was abandoned after 1583. The railway erased its eastern part, but excavations in the 1970s uncovered moats, stone walls and buildings; the site, now a park, has been protected as a National Historic Site since 1979.