Marugame Castle
丸亀城
Four tiers of curving stone walls stacked 60 m high under a small 1660 keep, with the Seto Ohashi bridges on the horizon
About Marugame Castle
Marugame's keep is one of the twelve in Japan that survive from before 1868, but the stone walls are the reason to come. You climb through them on foot, about 20 minutes from the Edo-period Ote gates up the steep Mikaeri-zaka slope, which runs right under the tallest of them, a curving face more than 20 m high. Between July and October 2018, heavy rain and typhoons brought down part of the southwest walls. The city is rebuilding them stone by stone until the end of March 2031, and a free hall beside the site has a rooftop deck over the work.
Essential Tips
The grounds never close, but the keep lets its last visitors in at 4 PM and the walk up from the Ote gate takes about 20 minutes, so be through the gate by 3:30 PM
Wear shoes with grip: the Mikaeri-zaka is steep, and so are the narrow stairs inside the keep
Go on a weekday if you want to watch the wall repairs: the city's two-week works schedule, posted on the castle website, shows no work on Saturdays or Sundays
Book the fan-making workshop at Uchiwa Kobo Take, inside the Ote gate, before you arrive: it runs 10 AM to 2 PM and costs ¥1,000
Since September 27, 2025 protective panels have stood in front of the keep's ground-floor west wall, where the plaster has cracked; the keep is open as normal, but the city asks visitors to keep away from that wall
Pets on a lead are welcome in the grounds but not in the keep or the Ote Ichi-no-mon; guide dogs can go in
The whole castle is non-smoking, and fires, barbecues and fireworks are banned, cherry blossom picnics included
You can sleep inside the castle: since July 2024 the Enjukaku Annex in the San-no-maru, built in 1933 from part of the Kyogoku family's Tokyo mansion, has taken overnight guests
Drivers: if the free car park by the City Museum is full, the city's Otemachi No. 1, Otemachi West and station underground car parks give two hours free when you validate the ticket at the museum, the keep or the tourist office
Don't Miss
The View Up from the Ote Gates
Stand outside the Ote Ni-no-mon and look up: the keep sits on the very edge of the walls, tier above tier. The two gates, built around 1670 and both Important Cultural Properties, enclose an unusually large square court, framed with mirror stones more than 2 m across. The gatehouse of the Ote Ichi-no-mon is open free, with its stone-drop chutes on show, and at noon every day a drum is beaten nine times inside it, a custom revived in 2006 from the days when the domain's samurai drummed the hours here.
The Fan-Slope Walls
Where the Mikaeri-zaka ends, look to your right: the corner of the wall rises from a gentle slope at its foot to nearly vertical at the top, the curve called ogi no kobai, the fan slope. On one walk round you pass rough fieldstone at the south-east foot of the hill, split stone in most of the main walls and closely fitted dressed blocks at the Ote gate. Legend says the master mason, Hazaka Jusaburo, climbed these walls with nothing but a short iron bar to prove it could be done, and the lord, afraid he might show an enemy the way, had him buried alive in a well.
Inside the Keep
The keep has only three small floors, so slow down for the details: pillars covered in the scale-like marks of the chouna adze, wide Edo floorboards among narrower later ones, walls packed with pebbles and roof tile against gunfire, and cannon ports plastered over so that no one outside could see them. A copy of the 1660 prayer tablet found inside a third-floor wall has been set back into it; the original is kept at the City Museum.
The Stone Wall Restoration Site
About 4,200 stones fell when the southwest walls collapsed in 2018. The free restoration hall beside the site explains how the walls came down and shows the masons' tools and finds from the excavation, and its rooftop deck looks straight over the work. In its VR corner you take up Nikkari Aoe, the Kyogoku lords' heirloom sword, and fight off attacking ghosts. The name comes from a legend: a warrior on a night road cut down a woman's ghost that grinned (nikkari) at him, and in the morning found a stone pagoda split in two. The real sword belongs to the City Museum, which bought it in 1997.
What to Do Here
Ote Gate to Summit Loop
Start outside the Ote Ni-no-mon for the view up, pass through both gates, then take the Mikaeri-zaka, the Looking-Back Slope, so called because it is steep enough to make you stop and turn round. Walk the San-no-maru past the base of the Inui turret, where the stones went red and brittle in the 1869 palace fire, to the old Tsukimi turret base in the south-east corner, with Iinoyama, the cone locals call Sanuki Fuji, straight ahead. Cross the Ninomaru past its well, whose water is more than 30 m deep, climb the keep, and leave by the south side for the restoration hall's rooftop deck.
Tips:
- Free volunteer guides wait by the tourist office at the foot of Mikaeri-zaka on Sundays from March to December, 9:30 AM to noon, except in rain; a tour takes about an hour
- Coin lockers are just east of the tourist office inside the Ote gate: ¥300 small, ¥500 large
- Toilets are at the foot of Mikaeri-zaka, in the San-no-maru and in the Ninomaru, among seven around the grounds
- The 100 Castles stamp is in the keep and in the City Museum
Make a Marugame Fan
Marugame makes about 90 percent of Japan's uchiwa fans, more than 100 million a year. In 1633 its fan makers came up with a red fan stamped with a circled 金, the Konpira mark, as a souvenir for pilgrims to Konpira-san, and the domain later encouraged its samurai to make fans on the side. At Uchiwa Kobo Take, in the tourist office building inside the Ote gate, craftspeople work on fans in front of you and help you make your own, which can dry while you walk up to the keep. The Marugame Uchiwa Museum, in the grounds of Nakazu Banshoen one stop west by JR, runs a similar workshop with a free museum attached.
Tips:
- The castle workshop takes up to ten people at a time and does not run from the afternoon of December 25 to the morning of January 4
- At the Uchiwa Museum a fan takes 40-50 minutes; book by 3:30 PM the day before
- The Uchiwa Museum is free and closed on Wednesdays (Thursday when Wednesday is a holiday) and from December 29 to January 3
Marugame and Konpira-san in a Day
Climb the castle in the morning, then take the train 21-29 minutes inland to Kotohira for the 785 stone steps up to the main hall of Kotohira-gu, the seafarers' shrine whose pilgrims those red fans of 1633 were made for. Both are on the JR network, so the day works from Takamatsu or Okayama on a JR Pass.
Tips:
- Kotohira-bound trains from Marugame run through Tadotsu without a change; the fare is ¥430
- The Nanpu limited express also stops at both and takes 21 minutes, for a ¥450 surcharge if you have no JR Pass
- The steps carry on past the main hall: 1,368 in all to the inner shrine, Okusha
Plan Your Visit
Opening Hours
keep
9:00 AM – 4:30 PM (last entry 4:00 PM)
ote Gate
The upper floor of the Ote Ichi-no-mon gate is open 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM, free
grounds
Open 24 hours, free
closed Days
Open every day; the keep and the gate can close at short notice for weather warnings, inspections, works or events
wall Repairs
The collapsed southwest walls are a fenced building site until the end of March 2031, the city's current target. The free Stone Wall Restoration PR Hall beside them is open 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM daily and has a rooftop viewing deck.
Best Time to Visit
A clear day, for the view north from the path up to the Seto Ohashi bridges. In spring the cherry trees planted across the Ninomaru bloom, and the Marugame Oshiro Matsuri is held around the castle every May 3-4; at the 2023, 2024 and 2025 festivals the city also opened the wall restoration site to visitors.
Avoid:
May 3-4 (the Oshiro Matsuri) and cherry blossom weekends, if you want the keep to yourself
Nearby
Marugame City Museum
Free museum inside the moat at the west foot of the castle hill, with the Kyogoku lords' documents and paintings and the tools of the town's fan trade; closed Mondays and national holidays.
370 m from the Ote gate
MIMOCA (Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art)
Yoshio Taniguchi's 1991 museum in front of JR Marugame Station, built to show the roughly 20,000 works the painter Genichiro Inokuma gave the city.
1 km
Nakazu Banshoen and the Marugame Uchiwa Museum
The Kyogoku lords' seaside garden of 1688 (¥800), its pond laid out after Lake Biwa with eight islands named for the Eight Views of Omi, and the free fan museum in its grounds; closed Wednesdays. By train it is one stop west to JR Sanuki-Shioya, then 15 minutes on foot.
3.4 km
Kotohira-gu (Konpira-san)
The shrine of sailors and fishermen, 785 stone steps up Mount Zozu to the main hall, 21-29 minutes from Marugame by JR (¥430).
15.5 km by rail
Gallery
From the north the keep shows its long side; one theory is that it was built wide east to west to look bigger from the town
Look closely and some stones carry masons' marks, such as a triangle or the character 田
In the Edo period it was called a three-storey turret rather than a keep, and the national heritage register still lists it as one
Every stone recovered from the collapse was numbered so that it can go back where it came from
History
founding
Ikoma Chikamasa, lord of Sanuki, and his son Kazumasa began a castle on Kameyama, a hill 66 m above sea level, in 1597, as a branch of their main seat at Takamatsu. It was abandoned under the shogunate's one-castle-per-province rule of 1615. In 1641 western Sanuki went to Yamazaki Ieharu, and in 1643 the shogunate gave him 300 kan of silver and excused him that year's attendance in Edo so that he could rebuild; the tall curving walls are the Yamazaki clan's work. The Kyogoku took over in 1658, held Marugame until the Meiji era, and around 1670 moved the main entrance to the north side, where the Ote gates stand.
significance
Four rings of wall, around the Honmaru, the Ninomaru, the San-no-maru and the lower Obi-guruwa, add up to 60 m from the moat to the summit. Until the 2018 collapse, the San-no-maru's south-west corner was taken to be a wall of about 17 m standing on a lower supporting wall. Taking it apart showed that it runs all the way down to the bedrock: one face of 31 m in 47 courses, second in Japan only to the 32 m east wall of Osaka Castle's main enclosure. The keep and the two Ote gates are Important Cultural Properties, and the whole site has been a National Historic Site since 1953.
reconstruction
The keep is officially dated 1660, from a prayer tablet of that year found inside a third-floor wall during the dismantling repair finished in 1950. In 2024 a tree-ring study found two cypress pillars felled in 1641, and the architectural historian who examined the keep argued that it was finished by 1643, under the Yamazaki, and that the tablet marks a repair by the new Kyogoku lord. A fire in 1869 destroyed the lord's palace and the Inui turret; the castle then passed to the army, and the remaining turrets were pulled down in 1876-77, leaving the keep, the Ote gates and the palace's front gate. Rebuilding the walls that fell in 2018 is now budgeted at ¥8.6 billion, up from ¥5.25 billion before the June 2025 revision.
name Origin
Kameyama means Turtle Hill, and the castle's other names are Kameyama-jo and Horai-jo.
Getting There
JR Yosan Line from Takamatsu
Station: Takamatsu Station to Marugame Station
Exit: South exit
Walk: 15 minutes to the Ote gate, then about 20 minutes up to the keep
Rapid trains take 24 minutes, with no surcharge. The simplest route, and Takamatsu is the natural base.
From Okayama across the Seto Ohashi
Station: Okayama Station to Marugame Station
Exit: South exit
Walk: 15 minutes to the Ote gate
55 minutes to 1 hour 15 by Marine Liner with a change at Sakaide, depending on the connection. Shiokaze limited expresses to Matsuyama and Nanpu to Kochi run straight through in 37-44 minutes, for a ¥760 surcharge without a JR Pass.
JR from Kotohira
Station: Kotohira Station to Marugame Station
Exit: South exit
Walk: 15 minutes to the Ote gate
21-29 minutes via Tadotsu, with no change on the through trains between Kotohira and Takamatsu. Pairs the castle with Konpira-san.
By Car
Station: Sakaide IC or Zentsuji IC (Takamatsu Expressway)
Walk: Free car park beside the City Museum, at the foot of the castle
About 20 minutes from either interchange along Route 11.
Location
Ichibancho, Marugame, Kagawa 763-0025
Nearest: Marugame Station (JR Yosan Line) (15 minutes from the south exit to the Ote gate, then about 20 minutes up to the keep)
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