Inuyama Castle (Nagoya) “Kodaman’s J-TRIP”

Nagoya is the third city in Japan but there aren’t much information for travelers even for Japanese. I just went to Nagoya with my wife to meet my friend then got infomation of “Inuyama.”

In Japan, there are four castles which are appointed to national treasure.

(Matsumoto castle in Nagano,Hikone castle in Shiga,Himeji castle in Hyogo and Inuyama Castle in Aichi. )

[History] Inuyama castle is the oldest of exsisting castles in Japan. It was built on the southern bank of the Kiso River in 1537.In the Warring states period, the warlord Hashiba Hideyoshi(Toyotomi) attacked the castle with a large army of 120.000 soldiers and fought against Tokugawa Ieyasu. This war was as known as “The battle of Komaki Nagakute” in 1584.

[Access?] From Nagoya we took Meitetsu Inuyama line but actually we took a different train and went to Gihu where Gifu castle is located in. Meitetsu line is complicated for us because there are four different lines leaveing from one home at station. Anyway, it must be taken for 30 min from Nagoya to Inuyama. From Inuyama station to the Castle it took 15 min on foot and we enjoyed looking around houses of Japanese old style.

What were amazing in Inuyama Castle were 360° view from the top of castle tower and steep stairway. I can’t believe that many Samurai went up and down with heavy armors. We saw Komaki Castle from top and we imagined how Hideyoshi prepared for the battle against Tokugawa Ieyasu.