Minakuchi Castle

Minakuchi Castle (水口城, Minakuchi-jō) is a hirashiro-style Japanese castle located in the former town of Minakuchi, in the city of Kōka, Shiga Prefecture, Japan. The castle is also known as Hekisui Castle

Minakuchi Castle is located on the old Tōkaidō highway connecting Kyoto with Edo and the provinces of eastern Japan. This was the most important highway in Edo Period Japan, and in the early Edo period, a system of official post stations on the Tōkaidō was formalized by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1601. One such station was Minakuchi-juku, with one honjin, one waki-honjin, and 41 hatago, one Tonyaba, for the stabling of packhorses and warehousing of goods, and one kōsatsu for the display of official notifications.It was used by many western daimyō on sankin-kōtai route to-and-from the Shogun's court in Edo. However, in 1634, when Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu decided to travel to Kyoto to meet the Emperor, an issue arose on where he would spend the night.

Almost all of the route of the highway was either controlled directly by the shogunate or by trusted fudai daimyō, at whose castle's the Shogun could stay. However, in the portion of the route in southern Ōmi Province, after the abolition of Minakuchi Okayama Castle, there was no suitable accommodation. The distance from Suzuka Pass to Hikone Castle or Zeze Castle was too great for a single day, and it was unthinkable from a prestige and from a security standpoint for the Shogun to stay in the same hatago that was used by ordinary daimyō. The solution was to construct a new Japanese castle adjacent to Minaguchi-juku.

The castle was patterned after the design of Nijō-jō in Kyoto. The central bailey is 150 meters square, surrounded by a moat. On the middle of the eastern side is a 20 meter square protrusion, which housed the composite gate. The sides of the enclosure were protected by stone walls, and there was a yagura watchtower at each corner. The one facing the highway was larger and was two-story; the others were single-story. The gardens were designed by Kobori Gonjūrō, son of the famed garden designer Kobori Enshū.

This castle was actually used as a lodge for one night for Tokugawa Iemitsu’s visit to Kyoto in 1634, but was never used after that. In 1682, the shogunate created Minakuchi Domain for the Katō clan, and transferred control of the castle to the new domain.

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

Minakuchi Castle ranks #4,640 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #227 of the 297 mapped in Japan. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,692 times in the last 60 days, more than 62% of the atlas. 5 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Kōka, 1 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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