Urado Castle Ruins

Kochi, Japan, Japan

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Urado Castle Ruins are the remains of a 16th‑century hill castle in Urado, now part of Kōchi City on Japan’s Shikoku island, situated on a slope overlooking Urado Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

The castle was originally built around the mid‑1500s by the Motoyama clan and later became the main stronghold of the Chōsokabe clan, who used it to control much of the Tosa region (today Kōchi Prefecture) after defeating the Motoyama. In 1585, following their rise to power over all of Tosa, the Chōsokabe briefly moved their headquarters to a new site on Otakasaka Mountain, but returned to Urado Castle around 1591 due to water supply problems, making it their principal castle for about ten years.

After the Chōsokabe lost the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the castle was taken over by the Tokugawa side, and the new lord Yamauchi Katsutoyo lived there only briefly before moving to Kōchi Castle in 1603, at which point Urado Castle was abandoned and gradually fell into ruin. Today, the site preserves scattered stone walls, traces of enclosures, and a small shrine on the former castle tower area, serving as a monument to Tosa’s medieval and early Edo history and to local events such as the Urado Ikki uprising by former Chōsokabe retainers who opposed the new regime.