During the Sengoku period, the lands where Takada Castle would later be built were part of Echigo Province and were controlled by the Uesugi clan.
In 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi relocated Uesugi Kagekatsu to Aizu Province and granted the area around Takada to his general, Hori Hideharu (1575–1606). During the 1600 Sekigahara campaign, the Hori clan supported Tokugawa Ieyasu, and after the victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, Echigo Province came under Hideharu’s control. At the beginning of the Edo period, Hideharu’s son, Hori Tadatoshi, faced peasant uprisings, religious disputes, and internal unrest within the clan. As a result, the shogunate accused him of incompetence, stripped him of his domain, and sent him into exile.
In 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered his vassals to build a castle for his sixth son, Matsudaira Tadatēru (1592–1683), which was intended to serve as the center of the Takada Domain. The construction was part of the Tokugawa shogunate’s projects known as tenka fushin (“public works”). Thirteen daimyo from different regions of the country took part in building the castle.
The castle was meant to control an important route linking the coast of the Sea of Japan with the Kanto region in the east, and also to strengthen the shogunate’s position against the powerful Maeda clan of the Kanazawa Domain.
Construction was overseen by Tadatēru’s father-in-law, the famous military commander Date Masamune. The castle was completed in a record four months.
Takada was classified as a hirajiro, or “flatland castle,” and covered a fairly large area—800 by 400 meters—divided into three baileys. Its defensive system included wide mizubori moats, which were filled with water from the Sekigawa River. However, the castle never had stone walls (ishigaki), which is quite unusual for late Edo-period castles. Instead, it relied on earthen ramparts (dorui). Several theories exist to explain the absence of stone walls, including Masamune’s desire to reduce costs and speed up construction in light of the looming confrontation between the Tokugawa and supporters of Toyotomi Hideyori, the area’s overly soft ground, and a shortage of suitable stone in the region.
The tallest structure in the castle was the three-story Sangaiyagura tower, built at the corner of the fortifications of the main bailey (honmaru). Many researchers consider it the castle’s donjon. In any case, it served as the main tower. At the center of the main bailey stood the honmaru goten, the lord’s palace. The main bailey was connected to the second bailey (ninomaru) by three bridges. Two entrances were protected by masugata barbicans, while the northern entrance was guarded by a tower-style gate known as a yaguramon.
However, Tadatēru did not enjoy his castle for long. During the second Osaka campaign in 1615, he came into conflict with his brother, Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada. His father, Tokugawa Ieyasu, also treated his sixth son quite coldly. As a result, in 1616 Tadatēru was removed from all posts and exiled to Takashima Castle, where he was effectively kept under confinement until his death in 1683.
After that, the Takada Domain and the castle passed to the Sakai clan, which ruled until 1619. The castle then changed hands many times, including various branches of the Matsudaira clan, a period of direct shogunate administration, and the Inaba and Toba clans. In 1741, Takada was granted to the Sakakibara clan, which held it until the beginning of the Meiji era.
The castle was severely damaged twice by major earthquakes, in 1665 and 1751. In 1802, the honmaru goten palace burned down completely, but was later rebuilt. Although the castle escaped destruction during the Boshin War of 1868, a fire in 1870 destroyed both the reconstructed palace and the donjon tower.
In 1872, in accordance with an edict of the Meiji government, the remaining castle structures were dismantled. Most of the moats were filled in, and the earthen ramparts were leveled. For a long time, the central part of the castle was used as a base for the Imperial Japanese Army. After World War II, the ruins were turned into a city park, and 4,000 cherry trees were planted there.
In 1991, to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of the city of Joetsu, the three-story donjon tower was reconstructed. It was recreated using surviving written sources and the results of archaeological excavations. This is one of the few examples of a careful reconstruction of a donjon in Japan. The tower now houses a history museum, and the third floor is used as an observation deck. The surviving moats and ramparts were restored, and Gokuraku Bridge—connecting the main and second baileys—was also rebuilt. In 2017, the Japan Castle Society included Takada in its list of the “Other 100 Notable Castles of Japan” (the “Top 200”).
See also
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Kishiwada Castle
The celebrated 14th-century military commander Kusunoki Masashige (1294–1336), who owned extensive lands south of what is now the city of Osaka, ordered one of his vassals, Kishiwada Osamu, to build a fortified residence. This order was carried out around 1336. These fortifications became the first structures on the site of what would later become Kishiwada Castle. From the beginning, the castle stood in a strategically important location—roughly halfway between the cities of Wakayama and Osaka, south of the key port of Sakai. Because of this position, it changed hands several times during periods of warfare.
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Kaminoyama Castle
Kamino-yama Castle stood at the center of an important logistics hub, in the middle of the Yonezawa Plain, which served as the gateway to the western part of the Tohoku region. Roads connecting the Aizu, Fukushima, and Yamagata areas intersected here.
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Imabari Castle
Tōdō Takatora (1556–1630) served at different times as a vassal of several famous clans—Azai, Oda, Toyotomi, and Tokugawa. He took part in the Battle of Anegawa (1570), the Battle of Shizugatake (1583), the invasions of Kyushu and Korea, the Sekigahara campaign (1600), and the Siege of Osaka (1614–1615).
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Iwakuni Castle
Kikkawa Hiroie (1561–1625) was the grandson of the famous daimyo Mori Motonari and a vassal of the Mori clan. Under Mori Terumoto, he fought in both Korean campaigns and took part in the defense of Ulsan Castle. During the Battle of Sekigahara, Hiroie stood with his 3,000-man force on the side of the Western Coalition; however, even before the battle began, he sent Tokugawa Ieyasu a secret message stating that he did not intend to fight Tokugawa’s troops. As a result of his inaction, 15,000 soldiers under Mori Hidemoto were also unable to enter the battle, since Hiroie blocked their path.
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Gujo Hachiman Castle
Gujo Hachiman Castle is located on 350-meter Mount Hachiman, near the confluence of the Yoshidagawa and Kodaragava rivers, and not far from the Nagaragawa River. During the Sengoku period, this area was of great strategic importance: it stood at a key crossroads of routes connecting Mino Province in the south with the Sea of Japan in the north, and Hida Province in the east with Echizen Province in the west.
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Amagasaki Castle
The founding year of Amagasaki Castle is traditionally considered to be 1617, when Toda Ujikané built his castle here, making it the administrative center of the Amagasaki Domain. However, as early as the Sengoku period, a fortress built by the Hosokawa clan already stood on this site. After the fall of Itami Castle in 1579, Araki Murashige—formerly a vassal of Oda Nobunaga who had rebelled against him—fled to this earlier castle.
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Hiroshima Castle
Mōri Terumoto (1553–1625) was the grandson and rightful heir of the renowned Mōri Motonari. When Terumoto became the head of the Mōri clan in 1571, he inherited vast territories covering a large part of the San’in and San’yō regions in western Honshū. In addition, the Mōri clan possessed the largest and most technologically advanced naval fleet of its time.
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Fukuyama Castle
After the defeat of Toyotomi Hideyori’s supporters in the Osaka Campaigns of 1614–1615, many clans in Japan still remained not fully loyal to the Tokugawa shogunate, especially in the western Chūgoku region. Mizuno Katsunari (1564–1651), a cousin of Tokugawa Ieyasu, became the first of the Tokugawa house’s close retainers, the so-called fudai daimyō, to be relocated to this strategically important area.
