Nagoya Castle

The Four Buildings That Outlived the Castle

Nagoya Castle (名古屋城, Nagoya-jō) stands in Honmaru, Naka Ward, Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, and four of its early Edo-period structures were designated an Important Cultural Property on 11 December 1930. The four are one gate, the Omote Ninomon (表二の門), and three corner turrets: the Seinan Sumi-yagura in the southwest, the Tōnan Sumi-yagura in the southeast, and the Seihoku Sumi-yagura in the northwest.

That number matters more than it first appears. Tokugawa Ieyasu began building this castle in Keichō 15 (1610) for his ninth son Yoshinao, and by Keichō 18 (1613) the great keep, the palace, the multi-storey turrets and the connecting corridor towers formed one of the most complete fortress complexes in Japan. On the night of 14 May 1945, American incendiary bombs reduced most of it to ash. The keep with its golden dolphins, the Honmaru Palace, the Omote Ichinomon inner gate: all gone in hours.

What you walk past today at the southern entrance to the Honmaru, and what you see silhouetted at the corners of the stone walls, is the remainder. Four buildings out of dozens. Everything else standing inside the moats is either reconstruction or reproduction.

Nagoya Castle as a whole carries a separate and higher-tier archaeological status as a Special Historic Site, and the Ninomaru Garden was designated a Place of Scenic Beauty in 2018. The Important Cultural Property designation is narrower and more specific: it attaches to the timber, plaster and roof tiles that survived.

Why the Designation Was Granted

All four buildings entered the register together in 1930, under the National Treasures Preservation Law then in force. When the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties replaced it in 1950, they were reclassified as Important Cultural Properties, which is why older guidebooks sometimes call them National Treasures.

Turrets Built to the Scale of Keeps

The Seinan Sumi-yagura and the Tōnan Sumi-yagura both date to around Keichō 17 (1612). Each measures two roof tiers on the outside but three floors within, an arrangement that is uncommon and easy to miss from the ground. The first storey has no roof of its own, so the eye reads two levels where the interior has three.

Their bulk is closer to a small keep than to a watchtower. The southwest turret runs about 11.8 metres east to west, 13.5 metres north to south, and rises roughly 14.1 metres. Both are roofed in hongawarabuki, the heavy combination of flat pan tiles and semicylindrical cover tiles, over an irimoya hipped-and-gabled frame.

The Seihoku Sumi-yagura is larger still: three roof tiers, three floors, about 13.9 metres by 16.9 metres, and some 16.2 metres tall. Among three-storey turrets surviving from the Edo period anywhere in Japan, it ranks second in size. It was completed in Genna 5 (1619), seven years after its southern counterparts.

A Gate Built to Be Struck

The Omote Ninomon, historically called the Minami Ninomon, was the outer gate of the Honmaru's main approach. It is a kōraimon, a gate type with a main gabled roof over the two principal posts and small subsidiary roofs over the rear supports. Sheet iron was nailed across the pillars and doors. The eaves were rendered in thick plaster so that fire arrows would find nothing to catch.

Behind it once stood the Omote Ichinomon, a heavier turret gate, and the two together formed a masugata: a square killing-box where attackers who forced the outer gate found themselves boxed in and fired upon from above. The inner gate burned in 1945. The outer one, improbably, did not.

What to Look For on Site

The three turrets are normally closed to the public. You view them from outside, which is less of a loss than it sounds, because the details that carry the most information are all on the exterior.

Read the Roof Tiles

Start with the ridge-end tiles. The Tōnan Sumi-yagura carries the aoi, the triple hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa house, exactly as you would expect on a castle built by Ieyasu for his son.

The Seinan Sumi-yagura carries chrysanthemums instead. The reason is an accident. In Taishō 10 (1921) the stone wall beneath it gave way and the turret collapsed. At that point the castle was administered by the Imperial Household Ministry, and the reconstruction completed in Taishō 12 (1923) used imperial chrysanthemum crests on the ridge tiles and gable-end tiles. Two turrets, built the same year to the same design, now wear the emblems of two different masters.

Defensive Fittings in Plain Sight

On the second floor of both southern turrets, look for the chidori-hafu, small triangular dormer gables, on the west and south faces of the southwest turret and the east and south faces of the southeast turret. Beneath them project the ishi-otoshi, boxed openings in the floor through which defenders dropped stones or fired down on anyone at the base of the wall.

The Tōnan Sumi-yagura adds one refinement the others lack: a noki-karahafu, an undulating cusped gable, set into the eaves on the east side of the third floor. It serves no defensive purpose whatsoever. It is there because the building faced the approach that important visitors used.

The Kiyosu Question

The northwest turret carries the nickname Kiyosu-yagura. Tradition holds that it was dismantled from Kiyosu Castle, the Oda clan stronghold that Nagoya Castle replaced, and rebuilt here. When the building was taken apart for repair between Shōwa 37 and 39 (1962 to 1964), carpenters found ink inscriptions dated after the ninth month of Genna 4 (1618) naming Sawada Shōzaemon, master carpenter to the Owari Tokugawa. They also found reused timber from older buildings.

So the tradition is half right. Salvaged material from Kiyosu did go into this turret. The keep of Kiyosu Castle was not moved here whole. The interpretive panel on the Ofukemaru side of the building explains as much, and it is worth stopping to read.

Practical Notes for a Visit

The grounds open at 9:00 and admission closes at 16:30, with the gates locked at 17:00. The castle is shut from 29 December to 1 January. Admission for adults is 500 yen and free for junior high school students and younger, though the city has announced that the adult rate rises to 1,000 yen on 1 October 2026. Tickets bought before that date remain valid.

The concrete keep rebuilt in 1959 has been closed to visitors since 2018 while the city works toward a timber reconstruction, and no completion date has been announced. This does not affect the Important Cultural Property buildings, which are all outdoors and visible during normal opening hours. The reconstructed Honmaru Palace, finished in 2018, is included in the standard admission.

The Seinan Sumi-yagura is opened to the public during limited seasonal periods, most reliably during the Nagoya Castle Summer Festival in August. Check the official site before travelling if entering a turret matters to you. Photography of the exteriors is unrestricted for personal use.

From Nagoyajō Station on the Meijō subway line, exit 7, the walk takes about five minutes. Sengenchō Station on the Tsurumai line is about twelve minutes away on foot. Two more Edo-period gates, the Ninomaru Ōte Ninomon and the former Ninomaru Higashi Ninomon, stand within the same grounds and are separately designated Important Cultural Properties, listed in 1975.