Yamaga Jin'ya

For a jin'ya site, there was more here to see than I expected. The site is nestled in a little corner of a small plateau partway up the mountainside with fantastic views of the valley below. It is about a 20 min walk from the valley and former jin'ya town to the jin'ya itself which is unheard of at

History

The area was originally controlled by the Waku clan until it was taken by Akechi Mitsuhide as part of the Tamba Pacification. See the profile for Kogamine Castle for more details.

Following the Honnoji Incident, Tani Moritomo was given the lands confiscated by Akechi Mitsuhide including Kogamine Castle, but he decided to build a new fortification lower down the mountainside for convenience. It is likely that the mountaintop castle was also maintained as a tsume-no-shiro, or emergency fortification, in case of siege.

Tani was a loyal retainer of Hideyoshi and fought in campaigns in Kyushu, Odawara and Korea. After the death of Hideyoshi he allied with Tokugawa Ieyasu and participated in the battles at Osaka too. At the Battle of Sekigahara, Tani Moritomo was part of the forces that surrounded Tanabe Castle. However, Tani had always been good friends with Hosokawa Fujitaka and did not take a sufficiently active role in the siege. Tokugawa reduced his landholding from 16,000 to 10,000 koku for this but allowed him to continue ruling the reduced lands. As a smaller jin'ya class samurai (10,000 koku or less), 17 generations of Tani ruled until the Meiji Restoration.

Field Notes

For a jin'ya site, there was more here to see than I expected. The site is nestled in a little corner of a small plateau partway up the mountainside with fantastic views of the valley below. It is about a 20 min walk from the valley and former jin'ya town to the jin'ya itself which is unheard of at other ji'ya sites around the country. This gives it some hilltop or mountaintop castle like properties.

The main area of the jin'ya has some slight earthen embankments remaining and in the back you can find the heavily weeded over ruins of some stone retaining walls. If you take one of the small unmarked side trails on the southwest side of the main bailey area it will take you partway down the hillside around the back of the Jin'ya where you can find a couple big dry moats (typical of mountain castles) and some very nice stone walls which appear to be more to prevent erosion than as defensive stone walls, also more typical of mountain castles. Down below here you will also find some flattened areas for residences.

Although I didn't really take photos of the town surrounding the jin'ya, the layout of roads and plots of land for houses is almost unchanged from the Edo Period. The combination of a lower castle and the tsume-no-shiro, both of which are preserved in their nearly original form makes this a unique and historically valuable site. There is a nice map of the jin'ya and Kogamine Castle on the Kyoto Board of Education website: https://www.kyoto-be.ne.jp/bunkazai/cms/?p=2206

The gate is reconstructed. It does not accurately represent a gate of the time but is nice for photos. The interior houses a little collection of artifacts and materials but it's only open by reservation. One minor criticism for the town is that the need to keep the weeds in check a little better. The weeds around the edges of the main area were higher than the fence around the well. I've seen much better photos online from just a couple years ago when they cleaned up the site and you could see stone walls and embankments of the main bailey area much better. You can't help it up in the mountains, but this is a nice little park that could benefit from a little more maintenance.

This site is not hard to get too but you might burn a lot of time waiting for transportation. There are infrequent busses from Ayabe Sta. that stop relatively close to the site from which it is only about a 10 min walk. The train line between Yamaga and Ayabe does not run frequently so if you can time it to catch a bus from Ayabe it is the best route. On the way back the wait for a return bus was even longer so I walked to Yamaga Station and waited about 30 mins there for the train back to Kyoto.

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Gallery

mountain castle in the background

Castle Profile
English Name	Yamaga Jin'ya
Japanese Name	山家陣屋
Alternate Names	Yamaga-jo
Founder	Tani Moritomo
Year Founded	1582
Castle Type	Hilltop
Castle Condition	No main keep but other buildings
Historical Period	Edo Period
Features	gates
Visitor Information
Access	Yamaga Sta. 25 min walk, or bus from Ayabe Sta
Hours	museum open by appointment only
Time Required	45 mins
URL	Castle Website
Location	Ayabe, Kyoto
Coordinates	35.3007, 135.31803
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Admin
Added to Jcastle	2024
Contributor	Eric
Admin Year Visited	2023
Admin Visits	October 22, 2023
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