01
Historical record
A mountain stronghold with a residence at its foot
Kagoshima Castle, also called Tsurumaru Castle, was built around 1601 as the Shimazu family's seat and became the political and cultural center of the Satsuma domain in the Edo period. It consisted of a mountain stronghold on Shiroyama hill behind and a residence at its foot, where the Reimeikan museum now stands, covering about 85 hectares in all.[1][9]
02
Historical record
The Shimazu family seat
The castle was built by Shimazu Iehisa (also known as Tadatsune), and for about 270 years, until the domains were abolished in the Meiji era, it remained the Shimazu family seat.[7][2]
03
Scholarly interpretation
Why no keep?
Many explanations have been offered: a saying attributed to the Shimazu that "people are the castle," a wish not to alarm the shogunate, tight finances, or the more than 100 outlying forts (tojo) across the domain. Yet the Shimazu built a castle with a keep in Korea during Hideyoshi's invasions, and their branch domain of Sadowara also had a keep, so they clearly knew how to build one. Kagoshima Prefecture explains that the Shimazu, an old family dating from the Kamakura period, valued traditional samurai custom and chose a residence modeled on the Muromachi shoguns' palace, backed by a mountain stronghold, so the keep, an invention of the new Oda and Toyotomi regimes, was simply not needed.[1]
04
Historical record
A Meiji fire and the Satsuma Rebellion
In 1873 a fire destroyed the buildings of the main enclosure and the Goromon gate. During the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion the area around the castle became a battlefield, and the walls around the gate still bear bullet and shell scars from that fighting.[2][1]
05
Historical record
Walls, moats and the mountain stronghold remain
The Kagoshima Prefectural Museum of Culture Reimeikan, opened in 1983, now stands on the main enclosure site. Genuine Edo-period stone walls and moats survive, and on Shiroyama behind, earthen ramparts, enclosures and artificially steepened slopes (kirigishi) remain from the mountain stronghold. There is no mock keep either.[1][4]
06
Historical record
Rebuilding the gate and planning for the future
Work to rebuild the Goromon began in 2015 as a joint public-private project and was completed in March 2020. In March 2026, Kagoshima Prefecture and Kagoshima City adopted a preservation and utilization plan for the Kagoshima Castle historic site. The prefecture says it will preserve and make use of the genuine walls and Shiroyama remains as a castle site without a keep.[2][3][1]
Asturio CantabrioCC BY-SA 4.0Wikimedia Commons
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