Kakegawa Castle

Kakegawa Castle traces its origins to the late 15th century under the Imagawa clan and was substantially rebuilt in the late 16th century by Yamauchi Kazutoyo, who later went on to found the domain at Kochi Castle in Shikoku after the Battle of Sekigahara. Kazutoyo modeled Kakegawa's keep on structures he had seen while serving under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the castle became an important base controlling the Tokaido highway between Edo and Kyoto through the Edo period. The original wooden keep was severely damaged in the 1854 Ansei-Tokai earthquake and subsequently torn down, leaving only the stone foundations and earthworks for over a century. In 1994, Kakegawa Castle's keep was rebuilt in wood using traditional joinery and construction techniques, the first such all-wood castle reconstruction completed in postwar Japan, based on surviving Edo-period drawings and comparison with the structurally similar keep at Ozu Castle in Ehime. The reconstruction includes the main keep, a connected two-story yagura turret, and the Ninomaru Palace, which is itself an original Edo-period structure that survived the demolition of the keep and today serves as a rare example of an intact castle palace open to the public. Interior displays trace the castle's Imagawa, Yamauchi, and subsequent Edo-period lords, along with models comparing the reconstruction methods to the original design. The keep's elevated position gives views over the city of Kakegawa and the surrounding tea-growing countryside, reflecting the region's long association with Shizuoka's tea industry.