Nagoya Castle Old Ninomaru East Ninomon

Two Gates That Outlasted the Castle

Stand at the eastern entrance to Nagoya Castle's inner bailey and you pass beneath a heavy timber gate that is older than almost everything around it. The reconstructed keep rising behind it dates from 1959; the palace beyond was rebuilt in 2018. The gate itself, the Old Ninomaru East Second Gate (Kyū-Ninomaru Higashi Ninomon), went up around 1612, when Tokugawa Ieyasu was raising the fortress for his ninth son, Yoshinao.

It does not stand alone. A short walk west, on the far side of the second bailey, its near-twin still guards the spot it has held for four centuries: the Ote Second Gate (Ninomaru Ote Ninomon). The two are usually discussed together, and for good reason. They were built in the same campaign, in the same form, and they are among the very few pieces of the original castle that the twentieth century did not destroy.

Nagoya Castle was a project on a national scale. Between 1610 and 1613, Ieyasu drafted the western lords into a tenka-bushin, a compulsory levy of labor and materials, to build a stronghold guarding the approach to the Tokaido and the route toward Kyoto. Katō Kiyomasa, the celebrated castle-builder, was assigned the enormous stone base of the keep. By the time the work was done, the castle anchored the senior of the three Tokugawa branch houses, the Owari Tokugawa, who held it for seventeen generations until the end of the samurai age.

Of that immense complex, very little survived the night of 14 May 1945, when American incendiary bombs reached the castle and the great keep, the small keep, and most of the Honmaru Palace burned. Six wooden structures came through the fire. Three corner turrets and the Honmaru front gate account for four of them. The remaining two are the gates described here.

What a Korai-mon Is, and Why It Matters

Both gates are built in the korai-mon style, roofed with hongawara, the formal arrangement of broad concave tiles and rounded covering tiles used on important buildings. The korai-mon is worth pausing over, because its shape is a piece of military engineering rather than decoration.

An older gate type, the yakui-mon, carried a single wide roof that sheltered the whole structure but also blocked the view from the walls above. The korai-mon solves that problem. Its main gabled roof spans only the two principal posts. Behind them, the two rear support posts each carry a small separate roof of their own. The result is a gate that is still sturdy and weatherproof but leaves the defenders stationed on the surrounding walls a clear downward line of sight and fire onto anyone halted at the threshold. Once you know to look for those two small back roofs, you can pick out a korai-mon anywhere.

Each gate formed the outer half of a masugata, a boxed entry court. In this layout an outer gate and an inner gate are set at right angles inside a square walled enclosure, so an attacker who breaks the first gate must turn ninety degrees, under fire from three sides, before reaching the second. The Ote Second Gate paired with an inner gate, the Ote First Gate, that no longer stands; together they were once known as the Nishi-kurogane-mon, the western iron gate, and formed the principal entrance to the second bailey.

The Old Ninomaru East Second Gate began life elsewhere in the castle. It was the first gate of the Higashi-kurogane-mon, the eastern iron gate of the second bailey. In 1963 it was taken down to clear ground for the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium, then re-erected in 1972 on the site of the lost Honmaru East Second Gate, where it stands today. The "Old" in its name records that displacement. Its timbers, though, are the originals. A careful dismantling repair between 2010 and 2012 went over the whole structure again.

Both gates were designated Important Cultural Properties on 23 June 1975. The distinction in date is telling. The three turrets and the Honmaru front gate had been recognized as National Treasures under the prewar law back in 1930 and reclassified as Important Cultural Properties in 1950. The two gates here waited another quarter century for the same protection, which is part of why visitors often walk past them without realizing what they are looking at.

Seeing the Gates on a Visit

The pleasure of these gates is in the close looking. Approach the Ote Second Gate and study the joinery: the iron strapping nailed across the doors and posts, the way the plastered eaves are finished, the slightly different pitch of the small rear roofs. This is carpentry meant to stop an army, executed with the precision the Tokugawa demanded of their flagship castle. Compare it then with the East gate at the inner bailey entrance. The two were cut from the same template, and seeing them within an hour of each other makes the family resemblance plain.

A practical note for planning. As of early 2026 the reconstructed keep is closed while a long-term project to rebuild it in timber moves forward; you can still photograph its exterior, but you cannot go inside. The grounds, the turrets, the gates, the celebrated stonework, and the gardens remain open, and the Honmaru Palace, faithfully rebuilt and completed in 2018, is the highlight most visitors come for. Because the gates are outdoor structures within the paid grounds, you can see them whenever the castle is open.

Give yourself time at the second bailey garden near the East Gate entrance, where plum and seasonal flowers frame the walk, and let the route carry you from the everyday bustle of the modern city into the quieter geometry of the old defenses. The gates reward the kind of attention that rushes past them at the keep miss entirely.