Tsuyama Castle Update and 500th Castle Visited

Last June I was tallying up my visits from the spring and realized I was sitting on #499, so I scrambled to find something exciting to do in June that would be fitting for a #500 visit. Tsuyama was not only perfect it exceeded my expectations. For the sake of record keeping, milestone marking castle

Tsuyama Castle Update and 500th Castle Visited

2024-12-02

Last June I was tallying up my visits from the spring and realized I was sitting on #499, so I scrambled to find something exciting to do in June that would be fitting for a #500 visit. Tsuyama was not only perfect it exceeded my expectations. For the sake of record keeping, milestone marking castles visits also include:

#100 Sugiyama Castle (Saitama) 2010
#200 Matsuo Castle (Nagano) 2015
#300 Sawayama Castle (Shiga) 2019
#400 Mochizukishi Castle (Koka) (Shiga) 2022

Tsuyama Castle is well known as a huge stone walled fortress and one of the most heavily fortified castles built. These days it's also well known for cherry blossoms and fall foliage. While the stone walls were amazing, what exceeded my expectations was how much of the Edo Period castle town remained in bits scattered around the city. From 4 relocated gates to an old stone gate ruin to great views of the castle walls, to merchant districts and a wealth of architecture from samurai homes. I discovered 11 original homes - unfortuantely none of them are open to the public - and the gates for another 6. Please be sure to see the galleries and feature pages for these details and more.

Galleries

Samurai Residences

I should have posted this some while ago after I put the pics on Facebook but I got caught up in some other things in the meanwhile. You might also notice a minor new feature on the site. If you mouseover any of the links above you should get a popup with a photo and breif description. The first time it might take a couple seconds to active. This currently works for all castles, samurai residences, and a few other pages. I'm modifying the templates to work with this, but some pages don't have a "key photo" to work with yet. Stay tuend for updates...

Tsuyama Castle / 津山城

Tsuyama castle is well known as one of the great cherry blossoms locations in Japan, but this stone walled fortress is also one of the greatest castles in Japan too. In some ways, this castle reminds me of Marugame Castle. With few moats you can get right up to most of the stone walls which cover the mountain in tiers similar to Marugame Castle. Tsuyama Castle was also one of, if not the most heavily fortified castles ever built with 77 yagura. Unfortunately we only have one yagura today to communicate the splendor of the castle. The Bitchu Yagura was an ornate yagura rebuilt in 2005 for the castle's 400th anniversary. Even though it is in a very strategic location, it actually did double duty as part of the Honmaru palace, so we have a unique defensive structure with both tatami mats and loop holes.

Unknown to many, Tsuyama actually has a very well preserved castle town atmosphere too, including many former samurai residences. Most of these are abandoned, in poor condition, or currently lived in so none of them are open to the public. Some city historical site preservation materials helped me to identify the most well preserved of the samurai residence architecture and document it here for this site. In the end it came down to some investigations on site, at the museum and asking questions at the museum and Tourist Information Center to gather what I've collected on this page. As far as I can tell there is no other site or source with as much information on the castle town gathered in one place.

Be careful that Tsuyama Station does not take IC cards at the gates despite being a bigger and manned station. You will need to get a paper ticket at Okayama. There is also a 2.5 hour bus route from Osaka. I had planned to take this on the way back, but it was delayed by heavy rains so I took the train back to Okayama and on to Osaka to be safe.

I did a lot of research before visiting this site and when writing the articles. There is a wealth of history and Edo Period artifacts to be preserved but the city is also struggling under rapid population decline and a lack of interest and funds to preserve and make use of them better. Tsuyama Town is a must see for all castle fans so please show your support. Just don't visit for cherry blossoms like everyone else. Let's spread out our visits!

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