Takada Castle

Takada Castle (高田城, Takada-jō)) was an Edo period flatland-style Japanese castle located in what is now the center of the city of Jōetsu, Niigata Prefecture in the Hokuriku region of Honshu, Japan. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, it was the centre of Takada Domain.

Takada Castle is located at the juncture of the Seki River and Yashiro River, and utilises a small height surrounded by the curving rivers as part of its outer moat. The castle is also located so as to control bottleneck in the main route between the Sea of Japan and the Kantō region to the east. Since the 14th century, this area was ruled by a branch of the Nagao clan, who were senior retainers of the Uesugi under the Muromachi shogunate. The Nagao clan built nearby Kasugayama Castle, and in the middle of 16th century, Uesugi Kenshin (1530-1578) (formerly of the Nagao clan but who had succeeded to the chieftainship of the Uesugi clan) united Echigo Province under his rule.

However, after his death, the clan was forced to submit to Toyotomi Hideyoshi and were transferred to Aizu. Hideyoshi appointed the Hori Hideharu (1575-1606) as lord of Echigo, and he relocated from Kasugayama to Fukushima Castle in the port of Naoetsu. The Hori clan was deprived of is holdings in 1610 by Tokugawa Ieyasu soon after the start of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the domain were given to Ieyasu's sixth son, Matsudaira Tadateru.

Matsudaira Tadateru was Ieyasu's son by a concubine, and had been sent away to be raised by retainers soon after his birth. He was appointed daimyō of Fukaya in Musashi in 1599, and was transferred to Sakura Domain in 1602, followed by Kawanakajima Domain in 1603. His appointment to Takada Domain came with a kokudaka of 750,000 koku, making the domain the second largest in Japan, and was intended to offset neighbouring Kanazawa Domain ruled by the tozama Maeda clan. Although Fukushima Castle was well-designed and was conveniently close to the port at Naoetsu, Tadateru found that it was too small for his forces, and was also subject to frequent flooding. In 1614, he decided to build a completely new castle at a more inland location.

During this time period, the relations between the Tokugawa shogunate and Toyotomi Hideyori and his supporters based in Osaka were rapidly approaching open war. Consequently, the shogunate could not afford either the time nor the money for a new castle at Takada.

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

Takada Castle ranks #1,959 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #118 of the 297 mapped in Japan. Founded 1614, it is older than 31% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 626 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 5,340 times in the last 60 days, more than 86% of the atlas. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Japan compares in the castle statistics.

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