Kishiwada Castle

Kishiwada Castle (岸和田城, Kishiwada-jō) is a Japanese castle located in the city of Kishiwada, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. At the end of the Edo period, Kishiwada Castle was home to the Okabe clan, daimyō of Kishiwada Domain. The Honmaru Garden of the castle is designated as a National Place of Scenic Beauty. The castle is also known as Chikiri Castle (千亀利城, Chikiri-jō).

Kishiwada Castle is located in the center of the city of Kishiwada, facing Osaka Bay. The site is a very strategic location, approximately half way in-between the cities of Osaka and Wakayama and just south of the port of Sakai. It is located on the Kishū Kaidō, the main route connecting the capital area of Japan with Kii Province, and its coastal location was important for transportation from the eastern Shikoku to Settsu Province and Kyoto. It is unknown when this location was first fortified. During the Nanboku-chō period, a local warlord named Kishiwada Osamu was subordinate to Kusunoki Masashige at the Battle of Minatogawa in 1336 and is believed to have built a fortified residence approximately 500 meters southeast of the current castle.

It later fell to the Ashikaga clan who appointed the Hosokawa clan as shugo of Izumi Province, and the Hosokawa appointed the Matsura clan as their deputies. At some unknown point, the castle was relocated to its present site on a small hill at the coastal terrace of Osaka Bay, protected to the north and south by rivers.

In the early 15th century, the Miyoshi clan (from Awa Province) invaded and defeated the Hosokawa clan and their proxies, and became rulers over a large portion of the Kansai region. Miyoshi Yoshikata (1527-1562), the younger brother of Miyoshi Nagayoshi made Kishiwada Castle as his base and extensively rebuilt its fortifications. The Miyoshi also developed Sakai into an international port and profited greatly from trade. Miyoshi rule proved to be short-lived and by the 1560s the clan was in eclipse and Izumi Province had collapsed into a patchwork of local strongmen. It became a battleground between the forces of Oda Nobunaga and the followers of the Saiga Ikki, local followers of the Ikkō-ikki movement, who sought to overthrow the feudal system and establish a theocratic republic, and who had allied with his arch-enemy, Ishiyama Hongan-ji temple.

Text adapted from “Kishiwada Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Kishiwada Castle ranks #1,610 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #89 of the 297 mapped in Japan. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 6,469 times in the last 60 days, more than 88% of the atlas. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Osaka, 29 km away. It is one of the 71 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Kansai. See how Japan compares in the castle statistics.

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