Themes
Castles carved out of whole mountains. Their height and views only make sense on foot — wear proper shoes.
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Nemuro, Hokkaido
根室半島チャシ跡群
Number one on Japan's list of 100 great castles has no keep and no stone walls: just ditches and earth mounds dug by the Ainu on headlands above the sea.
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Miyagi
仙台城
Inside the 17-meter stone wall of the main enclosure, archaeologists found two older walls, each built and then buried after earthquakes brought it down.
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Hachiōji, Tokyo
八王子城
A mountain castle that fell, still unfinished, while its lord Hojo Ujiteru was away defending Odawara.
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Ōta, Gunma
金山城
A Warring States mountain fort with no keep, yet on the summit you walk a stone-paved path between tall stone walls.
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Jōetsu, Niigata
春日山城
Uesugi Kenshin's castle had no stone walls and no keep: it was carved out of an entire mountain.
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Fukui, Fukui
一乗谷城
The castle was on the mountaintop; the lord, his retainers and townspeople lived on the valley floor below. An entire Sengoku-era castle town came out of the ground here.
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Nanao, Ishikawa
七尾城
A giant mountain castle spread over seven ridges in Noto, whose view so impressed its conqueror, Uesugi Kenshin, that he wrote it was even finer than he had heard.
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Mishima, Shizuoka
山中城
Moats shaped from earth alone, without a single stone, form a grid pattern with Mount Fuji behind them on clear days.
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Ena, Gifu
岩村城
On a 717-meter mountain, tiers of stone walls with no buildings left on them climb through the forest.
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Gifu, Gifu
岐阜城
The castle Oda Nobunaga used as his base for unifying Japan was an entire mountain.
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Chihayaakasaka, Osaka
千早城
The mountain fort on Mt. Kongo where Kusunoki Masashige held out with a small force and was never taken by the Kamakura shogunate's huge army.
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Nagahama, Shiga
小谷城
The mountaintop castle where Azai Nagamasa lived with Oichi and their three daughters, and where he took his own life when Nobunaga attacked.
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Ōmihachiman, Shiga
安土城
Nobunaga's seven-story tenshu burned only about three years after it was finished; on the summit, just its foundation stones remain in neat rows.
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Ōmihachiman, Shiga
観音寺城
On the mountain next to Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle stood a huge hilltop castle that was walled in stone before Azuchi was even built.
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Asago, Hyogo
竹田城
On clear late-autumn mornings, only the stone walls on the summit rise above a sea of clouds.
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Takatori, Nara
高取城
On a 583-meter mountaintop once stood a keep and 27 white turrets, so bright from the town below that a folk song mistook them for snow.
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Yasugi, Shimane
月山富田城
From the lord's mid-slope palace to the summit runs a single steep switchback, Nanamagari, climbed under fire from above: the defenses of the Amago clan's impregnable mountain castle.
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Tsuwano, Shimane
津和野城
On autumn and winter mornings, the red-tiled castle town sinks under fog while the high stone walls on the mountaintop float above it.
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Takahashi, Okayama
備中松山城
Of the 12 original Edo-period keeps left in Japan, this is the only one that stands on a mountaintop.
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Sōja, Okayama
鬼ノ城
No keep and no feudal lord: just 2.8 km of earthen wall ringing a mountaintop, built over 1,300 years ago.
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Akitakata, Hiroshima
郡山城
Mori Motonari turned an entire mountain into a castle, and ruled from its summit until the day he died.
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Iwakuni, Yamaguchi
岩国城
The keep on the hilltop was rebuilt about 50 m east of where the original stood, so that it could be seen from the town around Kintaikyo Bridge.
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Ōnojō, Fukuoka
大野城
Built in 665 to defend the nation, it rings the ridges of Mount Shioji behind Dazaifu with about 8 km of earthen ramparts and stone walls.
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Taketa, Oita
岡城
Stone walls on a clifftop, without a single building left, are said to have inspired Taki Rentaro's song "Kojo no Tsuki" (The Moon over the Ruined Castle).
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Nakijin, Okinawa
今帰仁城
The walls of the Hokuzan kings snake along the ridge for 1.5 km. Long after the kings fell and the governors left, people kept coming here to pray.
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Nakagusuku, Okinawa
中城城
Stone walls that amazed Commodore Perry's expedition, and the one gusuku where you can compare all three Ryukyuan styles of stonework side by side.
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Kaminokuni, Hokkaido
上ノ国勝山館
A fort on the Sea of Japan built by the founder of the Matsumae clan, where over 500 bone and antler tools of the kind used by the Ainu turned up among the finds, suggesting Japanese settlers and Ainu lived side by side.
In-depth article
Oga, Akita
脇本城
A Warring States castle made by reshaping an entire hill on the Oga Peninsula, where it juts into the Sea of Japan, out of earth alone. It covers about 150 hectares.
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Miharu, Fukushima
三春城
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Aizumisato, Fukushima
向羽黒山城
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Kasama, Ibaraki
笠間城
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Sano, Tochigi
唐沢山城
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Minakami, Gunma
名胡桃城
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Higashiagatsuma, Gunma
岩櫃城
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Odawara, Kanagawa
石垣山城
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Kofu, Yamanashi
要害山城
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Myōkō, Niigata
鮫ケ尾城
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Mihama, Fukui
佐柿国吉城
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Tsuruga, Fukui
玄蕃尾城
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Hakusan, Ishikawa
鳥越城
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Tonami, Toyama
増山城
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Tsu, Mie
多気北畠氏城館
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Shimada, Shizuoka
諏訪原城
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Kakegawa, Shizuoka
高天神城
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Gujō, Gifu
郡上八幡城
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Nakatsugawa, Gifu
苗木城
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Kani, Gifu
美濃金山城
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Takatsuki, Osaka
芥川山城
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Daitō, Osaka
飯盛城
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Maihara, Shiga
鎌刃城
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Ōmihachiman, Shiga
八幡山城
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Tamba, Hyogo
黒井城
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Uda, Nara
宇陀松山城
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Wakasa, Tottori
若桜鬼ケ城
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Mihara, Hiroshima
新高山城
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Higashikagawa, Kagawa
引田城
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Tokushima, Tokushima
一宮城
Matsuno, Ehime
河後森城
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Nankoku, Kochi
岡豊城
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Kiyama, Saga
基肄城
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Tsushima, Nagasaki
金田城
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Kusu, Oita
角牟礼城
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Saiki, Oita
佐伯城
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Yamaga, Kumamoto
鞠智城
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Miyazaki, Miyazaki
佐土原城
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Shibushi, Kagoshima
志布志城
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Minamikyushu, Kagoshima
知覧城
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Yomitan, Okinawa
座喜味城
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Uruma, Okinawa
勝連城
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