Wakasa Oniga Castle

Wakasa Oniga Castle (若桜鬼ヶ城, Wakasa Oniga-jō) was a Sengoku period mountain-top Japanese castle located in what is now the town of Wakasa, Tottori Prefecture, in the San'in region of Japan. The ruins of the castle were designated a National Historic Site in 2008.

Wakasa Oniga Castle was located on the 150-meter Mountain Tsuruoyama in southeastern Inaba Province. It commanded a juncture of the roads from Tottori to Kyoto and Harima Province. This area had been under the control of the Yabe clan since the Kamakura period, and was the site of a small fortification. During the Sengoku period, when the area came under the control of the Yamana clan, the shugo of Inaba Province, the castle was rebuilt. In the 15th century, Inaba was fiercely contested between the weakened Yamana, and their powerful and aggressive neighbors, the Amago clan and Mōri clan. In 1575, Yamanaka Yukimori entered the castle However, attacked by the Mōri clan and abandoned the castle.

With the rise of Oda Nobunaga, Inabe Province was conquered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he assigned Wakasa Oniga Castle to a relative, Kinoshita Shigekata. The castle was completely rebuilt per contemporary castle design concepts, such as the extensive use of stone walls, and Kinoshita was forced deeply into debt to pay for the construction.

The castle occupies the summit of the triangular-shaped hilltop in three concentric enclosures. The central bailey at the summit is roughly pentagonal, with 50-meter sides, and contains the ruined foundations of a tenshu which was 10 meters square. The entry to this central enclosure was via a compound gate to the northwest. The second and third enclosures were further down the slopes of the mountains, and each also had a compound gate protected by stone walls. The total size of the castle is about 150 by 50 meters.

Following the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Kinoshita Shigekata was forced to commit seppuku. Tokugawa Ieyasu awarded the castle to Yamazaki Iemori, a former Toyotomi retainer who had married a sister of Ikeda Terumasa, and who had rescued Ieyasu's daughter Tokuhime, who had been a hostage held by Ishida Mitsunari to ensure that the Tokugawa remained loyal. His son, Yamazaki Ieharu, was found at the Battle of Osaka in 1614-1615 and was rewarded by reassignment to a larger domain in Bitchu Province in 1617, and later to Marugame Domain.

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

Wakasa Oniga Castle ranks #5,422 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #260 of the 297 mapped in Japan. Founded 1200, it is older than 77% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 564 atlas entries founded in the 12th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,246 times in the last 60 days, more than 54% of the atlas. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Himeji, 64 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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