Tamaru Castle

Tamaru Castle (田丸城, Tamaru-jō) was a Japanese castle located in Tamaki, northern Mie Prefecture, Japan. At the end of the Edo period, Tamaru Castle was home to the Kuno clan, daimyō of Tamaru Domain and one of the hereditary karō to Kii Domain. The ruins are a Mie Prefecture Historic Site.

Tamaru Castle is located on a hill between the Kushidagawa river and Miyawawa river in Watarai District of Ise Province. This area was a strategic junction between the Ise Honkaidō and the Kumano Kaidō, used by many pilgrims to the Ise Grand Shrine and Kumano Shrines. In the Muromachi period, southern Ise was ruled by the Kitabatake clan, who had supported Emperor Go-Daigo and the Southern Court during the Nanboku-chō period. In 1336, Kitabatake Chikafusa built a castle at this location initially to protect the eastern approaches to Yoshino, where the emperor had found refuge, but also access to the important shrines at Ise and Kumano.

It was briefly taken by Ashikaga Takauji in 1342, but as recovered soon after by the Kitabatake. In 1569, Oda Nobunaga invaded Ise Province, defeating the Kitabatake, who were forced to accept Nobunaga's second son, Oda Nobukatsu, as their heir. In 1575, Nobukatsu formally succeeded to head of the clan, and the following year (at Nobunaga's bequest), he invited all of the prominent members of the Kitabatake clan and its cadet branches to a banquet, at which he had all of them killed.

In 1576 Nobukatsu significantly rebuilt Tamaru Castle as his main residence. Nobukatsu commissioned the addition of stone walls and a tenshu, which were completed just before Nobunaga's construction of Azuchi Castle, which is also known to have featured a tower. As such, Tamaru Castle is thought to be the first Japanese castle to include a tower. However, Nobukatsu was less successful politically. In 1579 he attacked Iga Province without Nobunaga's approval and suffered a major defeat. In 1580, Tamaru Castle burned down, and Nobukatsu relocated his seat to Matsugashima Castle near the coast. After Nobunaga's assassination in 1582, he was briefly allied with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but was deprived of his territories and in the end survived only a minor daimyō within the structure of the Tokugawa shogunate.

After the start of the Tokugawa shogunate, the castle was awarded to Inaba Michito as the center of a 45,700 koku Tamaru Domain.

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

Tamaru Castle ranks #5,019 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #243 of the 297 mapped in Japan. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,742 times in the last 60 days, more than 63% of the atlas. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Matsusaka, 13 km away. See how Japan compares in the castle statistics.

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