Hikone Castle

Hikone Castle crowns Konkizan, a low hill on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa in the city of Hikone. It was the seat of the Ii family, who held the Hikone domain throughout the Edo period and supplied several of the shogunate's chief ministers (tairō). The castle guarded the routes between eastern Japan and Kyoto at a strategic narrowing of the Nakasendō corridor.

The three-storey main keep is small but richly articulated, with a varied composition of gables, curved karahafu and bell-shaped windows. It is one of twelve keeps that survive from the Edo period or earlier and is one of five castles whose keeps are National Treasures. Materials from older castles in the region were reused in its construction; the keep itself is traditionally said to derive from Ōtsu Castle.

Much of the castle's defensive layout survives: the dry moats and ridges that divide the hill, the Tenbin-yagura turret spanning a trench on a bridge, and the stone walls that climb the slopes. At the foot of the hill lie the reconstructed palace, now the Hikone Castle Museum, and the Genkyū-en garden of the Ii lords.

After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Ii Naomasa, one of Tokugawa Ieyasu's foremost generals, was given the domain around the former Sawayama Castle of Ishida Mitsunari. His son Naokatsu began building a new castle at Hikone in 1603 with the support of the shogunate and neighbouring lords, and the complex was finished around 1622. The Ii remained here until the abolition of the domains; Ii Naosuke, lord of Hikone and chief minister, signed the treaties opening Japan in 1858 and was assassinated in 1860. The castle escaped demolition in the Meiji period.

The red-lacquered armour of the Ii clan, the "red devils", is one of the best-known images of samurai warfare, and the Hikone Castle Museum holds a large collection of Ii heirlooms. Ii Naosuke, the most famous lord of Hikone, was also an accomplished tea master and writer on the tea ceremony.

Hikone Castle is on Japan's tentative list for World Heritage nomination. Its white cat mascot Hikonyan, wearing the Ii family's horned red helmet, has become one of the best-known local mascots in Japan.