Bitchu Matsuyama Castle and Ohmatsuyama Castle Updates

This update is only one day of castle exploring but it brings lots of new content and exciting updates to Jcastle. Bitchu Matsuyama Castle is well known as one of the 12 original castles. Travellers tend to just go to the main keep and return but extending along the ridg

Bitchu Matsuyama Castle and Ohmatsuyama Castle Updates

2025-01-23

This update is only one day of castle exploring but it brings lots of new content and exciting updates to Jcastle.

Bitchu Matsuyama Castle is well known as one of the 12 original castles. Travellers tend to just go to the main keep and return but extending along the ridge behind the castle are many more ruins to explore. The first time I visited this castle, it was actually closed off due to typhoon damge to the bridge and it took 14 years to make it back again!

At one point the entire mountaintop of Mt. Gagyu was fortified beginning with Ohmatsuyama Castle. In the Edo Period that was scaled back to focus on the main keep at the present day location on a peak called Komatsuyama, where it could also be seen from the town and act as an important symbol of the domain. Along this ridge you will also find many more stone walls, baileys, a unique stone walled pond and a stone wall guardhouse platform overlooking a stone walled gate and horikiri trench.

In the castle town, you will find stone walls of the palace foundations and 2 original samurai homes. A temple complex on the opposite side of town focused on Shogenji also functioned as a fortification during a time when castle construction was strictly regulated by the Tokugawa government. Take a look at the photo for Shogenji. It looks like a castle itself!

Bitchu Matsuyama Castle / 備中松山城

Bitchu Matsuyama has a fairly small original main keep but at the top of a mountain overlooking the town it didn't need to be any bigger. It is quite a hike to the top of the mountain so if you want to save some time and energy you can take a taxi (~1800 yen) or walk to the park ride near the base of the mountain. It is available on weekends, holidays and during busy season. For my latest trip I used the park & ride and walked back down. I revisited this site in Nov 2024 almost 10 years to the day of my first visit. The trees were a little bigger but nothing else had changed. This time armed with much more castle knowledge and some information about the extended fortifications and this castle's predecessor Ohmatsuyama Castle I spent much of the day scrambling around the top to find all the ruins I could and I still did not have enough time. Besides the ruins around the top of the mountain, the town is also a splendid castle town with 2 original samurai homes. One of the more impressive findings on this trip was also the string of temples that almost look like castles from a distance with high stone walls in multiple levels with clay walls atop them and pseudo-masugata looking gates. Visit the castle town album for details.

Ohmatsuyama Castle / 大松山城

Ohmatsuyama castle is behind the better known Bitchu Matsuyama Castle. It is about 700m from that castle's tenshu (donjon). Several sign posts indicate the way. On site there is only one big panel with a map of the ruins and the history of the castle. You clearly can make out the 3 big baileys, as well as the horikiri, separating the ninomaru and sannomaru. There is also what appears to be the remains of a well. (Furinkazan 2024)

This is the third peak of Mt. Gagyu. Ohmatsuyama Castle is a very typical mountaintop castle with a 3 main baileys along a ridge with earthworks such as embankments (dorui), horikiri trenches and side baileys (koshiguruwa). There are also a couple spots of small stone pilings to prevent erosion but no significant stone walls. This clearly sets it apart from Bitchu Matsuyama Castle. The difference between these two castles, Ohmatsuyama Castle and Bitchu Matsuyama Castle (or more properly Komatsuyama Castle), is often confused across the interwebs. The signs are clear but I suspect some less informed people simply call everything after the bridge as Ohmatsuyama Castle since there are no big buildings nor high stone walls like the honmaru (see Bitchu Matsuyama Castle - Outer Baileys for details).

Could there have been overlap between the two? Of course. The original Ohmatsuyama Castle was built in the Kamakura Period but by the time the Sengoku Period rolls around and the Amako and Mori start to make incursions into the region, the Mimura fortified the entire top of the mountain including the peaks of the Tenjin-no-maru and Komatsuyama Castle. Following the Battle of Sekigahara and shakeup of the regional domains, Mizunoya Katsumune became lord of the area and built the modern castle we know of as Bitchu Matsuyama Castle on the peak of Komatsuyama. He left the shrine at the Tenjin-no-maru alone so we have ruins of Sengoku Period fortifications around this shrine but he renovated the rest of the Mt. Gagyu mountaintop as part of his Edo Period castle. (Eric 2025)

Original Profile and history by (Furinkazan 2024), updated in 2025 by (Eric)

Loading map...