Themes
No car needed. These castles are within a 15-minute walk of a station, based on official and other confirmed information.
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Matsumae, Hokkaido
松前城
Built on the shogunate's orders to face down foreign ships, this was the last and northernmost castle built in the traditional Japanese style, with seven gun batteries lined up toward the sea.
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Hirosaki, Aomori
弘前城
An original Edo-period keep is moving on rails right now: shifted aside 11 years ago so its stone base could be rebuilt, it is on its way back in 2026.
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Hachinohe, Aomori
根城
A castle of earth and timber with no keep or stone walls, whose late-16th-century main enclosure has been rebuilt, building by building, from the post holes found in excavation.
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Tagajō, Miyagi
多賀城
In a small hall beside the south gate stands a stone that still announces, in its own carved words, that this "castle" was founded in 724.
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Akita, Akita
久保田城
It was the seat of a domain worth over 200,000 koku of rice, yet it had almost no stone walls and never had a keep.
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Yamagata, Yamagata
山形城
When a film needed the gate of Edo Castle, it was Yamagata Castle's Ninomaru East Otemon Gate that played the part.
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Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima
会津若松城
The only castle in Japan today where you can see a keep roofed in red tiles.
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Chiyoda, Tokyo
江戸城
After its 58-meter keep burned in 1657, it was never rebuilt; only the huge stone base remains, in a garden of the Imperial Palace.
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Mito, Ibaraki
水戸城
The castle of the Mito Tokugawa, one of the shogun's three senior branch families, defended not by stone walls but by deep moats and earthen ramparts.
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Ashikaga, Tochigi
足利氏館
The ancestral home of the Ashikaga shoguns became a temple, and its moat and earthen banks have survived around the temple grounds for 800 years.
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Odawara, Kanagawa
小田原城
To face Toyotomi Hideyoshi, its lords wrapped the whole town, not just the castle, in 9 km of moats and earthen walls.
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Nagano, Nagano
松代城
Takeda Shingen built it as his front line in the Kawanakajima wars, and the Sanada family later lived here for 250 years.
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Ueda, Nagano
上田城
This is the Sanada clan's castle that twice drove back Tokugawa armies, yet the turrets standing today were built after the Sanada had gone.
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Komoro, Nagano
小諸城
To reach this castle you walk down from the town, not up: Komoro is a "hole castle."
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Kofu, Yamanashi
甲府城
Kofu Station itself stands on the site of one of the castle's enclosures.
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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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Takaoka, Toyama
高岡城
More than a third of the castle site is water: moats dug 400 years ago still lie in the middle of town in almost their original shape.
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Aichi
名古屋城
The keep crowned with golden shachi can't be entered today. Using prewar measured drawings and photographs, the city is preparing to rebuild it in wood.
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Okazaki, Aichi
岡崎城
This is the castle where Tokugawa Ieyasu was born, and the well said to have supplied his first bath still survives on the grounds.
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Shinshiro, Aichi
長篠城
Here 500 defenders held off a 15,000-strong Takeda army. The cliffs where two rivers meet and the main enclosure's great earthen rampart still remain.
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Iga, Mie
伊賀上野城
This castle has had three keeps: Tsutsui Sadatsugu's three-tiered one, Todo Takatora's five-tiered keep toppled by a storm just before completion, and a wooden keep built in the Showa era by a local politician with his own money.
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Matsusaka, Mie
松阪城
Built into the stone base of the keep are the lids of ancient stone coffins from burial mounds.
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Shizuoka
駿府城
Under the lawn of a city park, excavators found two keep bases built by Tokugawa Ieyasu in two different eras, one on top of the other.
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Kakegawa, Shizuoka
掛川城
At the foot of a keep rebuilt in wood after 140 years stands an Edo-period palace that never left.
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Kyoto
二条城
Built in the year the Tokugawa shogunate began, it still has the hall where the shogun announced he would give power back.
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Hikone, Shiga
彦根城
A castle of reuse: its National Treasure keep is said to have come from Otsu Castle, and other buildings and even wall stones from other castles.
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Tamba-Sasayama, Hyogo
篠山城
The keep base was built, but a keep never stood on it.
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Akashi, Hyogo
明石城
From the station platform you can see two three-story turrets standing at either end of a long stone wall.
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Tsuyama, Okayama
津山城
Only one turret stands today, yet the three tiers of stone walls wrapping an entire hill still show how big this castle was.
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Okayama
岡山城
Look at the foot of the black keep and you'll see its base is not square but a lopsided pentagon.
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Fukuyama, Hiroshima
福山城
Walk around to the north side, and the white keep turns into a wall of black iron.
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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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Hagi, Yamaguchi
萩城
The keep is gone, but its stone base, flaring out like an open fan, still reflects in the moat in front of Mt. Shizuki, a hill jutting into the sea.
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Takamatsu, Kagawa
高松城
The moats hold 100% seawater: the water rises and falls with the tide, and sea bream swim in the inner moat.
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Marugame, Kagawa
丸亀城
A small original keep, about 15 m tall, is lifted high by tier upon tier of stone walls, walls that collapsed in 2018 and are still being rebuilt today.
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Tokushima, Tokushima
徳島城
Not a single original building survives, but walls of local blue-green stone, aoishi, still show the shape of the castle.
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Matsuyama, Ehime
湯築城
The park next to Dogo Onsen is the castle from which the Kono clan ruled Iyo for some 250 years. It had no stone walls and no keep, only earthen ramparts and a double ring of moats.
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Matsuyama, Ehime
松山城
The keep was finished the year after Perry's Black Ships arrived, and its roof tiles bear the hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa clan.
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Uwajima, Ehime
宇和島城
Both the Edo-period keep and an Edo-period wooden model of it, built at one-tenth scale, survive.
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Kōchi, Kochi
高知城
The lord's palace is still attached to the side of the keep, and the whole Edo-period main enclosure survives intact.
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Fukuoka
福岡城
The massive keep base still stands, yet whether a keep was ever built on top of it is still an open question.
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Karatsu, Saga
名護屋城
For just seven years, daimyo from all over Japan camped around this headland.
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Yoshinogari, Saga
吉野ヶ里
A farming village from some 2,000 years ago, with no stone walls and no keep, is one of Japan's 100 Fine Castles.
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Hirado, Nagasaki
平戸城
Its lord burned his own castle just before it was finished, and it was rebuilt a century later.
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Shimabara, Nagasaki
島原城
A castle said to be far too grand for a minor lord held off the insurgents of the Shimabara Rebellion.
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Ōita, Oita
大分府内城
A seaside castle whose builder disliked the place name "Unloading" and renamed it "Raising Cargo".
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Kumamoto
熊本城
From a walkway 6 meters above the ground, you look down on stone walls toppled by an earthquake and the repairs happening right now.
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Nichinan, Miyazaki
飫肥城
A castle carved out of a volcanic-ash plateau, fought over by the Ito and Shimazu clans for 84 years.
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Kagoshima, Kagoshima
鹿児島城
The castle where the Shimazu, lords of a vast 770,000-koku domain, chose not to build a keep.
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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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Naha, Okinawa
首里城
The royal palace has burned five times and been rebuilt every time. The main hall lost in 2019 reopens in its newest form on November 23, 2026.
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Hakodate, Hokkaido
志苔館
Right next to this earthwork fort, three huge jars packed with more than 380,000 coins were dug up. Overlooking the sea, it was an outpost of Japanese settlers who thrived on northern sea trade.
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Aomori, Aomori
浪岡城
A castle at the northern tip of Honshu where a family said to descend from the noble Kitabatake clan kept up ties with Kyoto. Eight enclosures, split by double moats 20 m wide, fan out across the land.
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Ninohe, Iwate
九戸城
The last battlefield of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's campaign to unite Japan, with main-enclosure stone walls, raised after the castle fell, that are thought to be the oldest castle walls in the Tohoku region.
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Shiroishi, Miyagi
白石城
The castle of Katakura Kojuro, right-hand man to Date Masamune: allowed to survive as the Sendai domain's second castle after the one-castle-per-province rule, with its three-story turret rebuilt in wood and clay in 1995.
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Akita, Akita
秋田城
The northernmost of Japan's ancient frontier forts, where soil from a Nara-period flush toilet held clues that visitors from the Asian mainland once stayed here.
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Tsuchiura, Ibaraki
土浦城
Tsuchiura's main enclosure, ringed by moats, was said to look like a turtle floating on water, and it still has the only surviving main-enclosure gate tower in the Kanto region.
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