Tanaka Castle Ruins

Fujieda, Japan, Japan

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The Tanaka Castle Ruins are the remains of a flatland Japanese castle in the city of Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, famous for its unique, almost perfectly concentric circular design with four concentric baileys and water moats that make it the only such “round castle” in Japan.

Originally a fort built under the Imagawa in the 1530s, the castle was greatly expanded by Takeda Shingen after he conquered the area in 1570, and it became a key stronghold defending the western approaches to the Imagawa and then Tokugawa’s Sunpu Castle; Tokugawa Ieyasu launched more than five attacks on Tanaka over seven and a half years from 1574 before finally capturing it in 1582, and later in retirement he frequently came here for falconry and famously suffered stomach pains after eating too much sea bream tempura, which is said to have contributed to his death in 1616.

In the Edo period, Tanaka Castle served as the seat of the Honda daimyō of Tanaka Domain, but much of it was dismantled during the Meiji Restoration, and today the former inner bailey lies inside Nishimashizu Elementary School (closed to the public), while the southeast corner of the castle has been preserved and restored as Tanaka Castle Residence Park, a free-access historic site with a reconstructed main turret (Honmaru Yagura), a tea house, stables, and a village storehouse, all set within a quiet garden where visitors can walk among remaining moats, stone walls, and Edo-period buildings that recall the castle’s history.