Tokushima Castle Ruins and Central Park

Tokushima Castle was built between 1585 and 1587 by Hachisuka Iemasa after Toyotomi Hideyoshi granted him the Awa domain following the Kyushu campaign. The castle stood on Mt. Shiroyama at the mouth of the Yoshino River, using the hill's granite outcrops and a network of moats fed by the river to command the surrounding plain. For nearly three centuries it served as the administrative center of the Hachisuka clan, who built Tokushima's economy on the cultivation and trade of indigo dye, and the domain grew into one of Shikoku's wealthiest under their rule. Most of the castle's wooden structures, including the main keep, were dismantled in 1873 as part of the Meiji government's nationwide castle-abolition decree, and the remaining buildings were destroyed in the 1945 air raids on Tokushima City. What survives today are the original Edo-period stone ramparts, the Sengoku-era Bizen-maru stone bridge, and sections of the moat, all preserved within Tokushima Central Park. The Tokushima Castle Museum, a concrete reconstruction built on the former Omotegoten palace site in 1992, displays samurai armor, swords, palanquins, and other Hachisuka-clan artifacts recovered from archaeological digs on the grounds. The museum's exhibits are arranged chronologically, tracing the castle's construction, the clan's governance of the domain, and its demolition, alongside scale models showing the castle's original layout. The park itself retains the Senshukaku Japanese garden, one of the few Edo-period daimyo gardens in Shikoku to survive largely intact, with its stone bridges and pond dating to the same construction period as the castle.