Nagoya Castle

After his victory at Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered a new castle at Nagoya to secure the Tōkaidō road and watch over the Toyotomi in Osaka. Construction began in 1610 as a national project: some twenty western daimyo were obliged to build the stone walls, and Katō Kiyomasa was responsible for the massive stone base of the keep. The castle town was created by moving the entire population of nearby Kiyosu, and Ieyasu's ninth son Yoshinao became the first lord of the Owari domain, the senior of the three Tokugawa branch houses.

The five-storey main keep, completed in 1612, was one of the largest ever built, topped by a pair of shachihoko — mythical creatures with a tiger's head and a fish's body — covered in gold. Beside it, the Honmaru Palace of 1615 was considered one of the finest examples of shoin-style residential architecture, its rooms decorated by painters of the Kanō school.

In 1930 the keep and palace became the first castle buildings designated National Treasures, but both burned in the air raid of 14 May 1945. The keep was rebuilt in steel-reinforced concrete in 1959, with new golden shachihoko. The palace's movable paintings had been removed for safekeeping before the raid and survived; using them and pre-war surveys, the palace was reconstructed in cypress by traditional methods and completed in 2018.

The site was earlier occupied by Nagoya Castle of the Imagawa and Oda, said to be the birthplace of Oda Nobunaga. Ieyasu's new castle made Nagoya the largest city between Edo and Kyoto, and the Owari Tokugawa ruled from it until 1871. After the Meiji Restoration the castle passed to the army and then to the Imperial Household, which gave it to the city of Nagoya in 1930.

Following the destruction of 1945, three corner turrets and three gates survived and are Important Cultural Properties. The 1959 keep was closed to visitors in 2018 over concerns about its earthquake resistance, and the city decided to rebuild it in wood based on the detailed pre-war surveys.

Nagoya Castle is the emblem of its city, and the saying that 'Owari Nagoya stands on its castle' reflects how closely the two were identified. The golden shachihoko appear on everything from souvenirs to the city's festival imagery, and the castle is counted, with Osaka and Kumamoto, among the three great castles of Japan.

The grounds host seasonal events such as cherry blossom viewing in spring and a summer night festival, and the reconstructed Honmaru Palace has become a showcase of traditional craftsmanship: carpenters, painters and metalworkers recreated its interiors using historical materials and techniques. The treasures of the Owari Tokugawa family are kept in the Tokugawa Art Museum east of the castle.