Matsue Castle
松江城
The San'in region's only original castle keep, black-boarded and finished in 1611, with small covered boats circling the moats below
About Matsue Castle
Matsue is one of only five castles in Japan whose keep is a National Treasure, and it won the title back in 2015 thanks to two lost prayer tablets that city staff tracked down in 2012 at a shrine in the castle grounds. Inside, you climb through the original frame, from a stone-walled basement holding the only well left in any surviving keep, up stairs of paulownia boards about 10 cm thick, to a top floor open on every side to the rooftops and Lake Shinji. From June 2027 to December 2030 the keep will stand under a protective shelter for a roof repair, and it will close for about four months at each end of the work.
Essential Tips
If you are taking the Lake Line loop bus, get the ¥700 day pass: showing it gets you the group rate at the castle (¥960 instead of ¥1,200), on the Horikawa boat (¥1,800 instead of ¥2,000), at both Hearn sites and at the Samurai Residence. It is sold at the JR Matsue Station souvenir shop, at Matsue Shinjiko Onsen Station and in JR West's tabiwa app, not on the bus
Shoes come off at the keep door and go in a plastic bag you carry (bring your own bag if you can); one that hangs from your shoulder leaves both hands free for the stairs. There are no slippers and no heating, so wear socks that grip
Leave big bags at the Buratto Matsue tourist office, on your right inside the Otemae entrance (¥400 medium, ¥600 large, 8:30 AM – 5 PM), or in the coin lockers behind it; nothing can be left up at the keep
The Honmaru's north gate has been shut since the January 2026 earthquake knocked filler stones out of its wall, with no reopening date announced by September 2026, so every way up to the keep now goes through the south side. The wooded path round the north of the park is closed until March 2030, after heavy snow in February 2026 brought trees down
Keep left on the castle paths. The castle asks everyone to, and says the rule goes back to the samurai: they wore their swords on the left, and two scabbards knocking as their owners passed could start a fight
The repair dates are Matsue City's plan and have moved once already: in April 2026 the work grew by seven months. If your trip falls around mid-2027, check the castle's news page before you go
Pets can go into the keep only in a carrier that closes completely (guide dogs excepted); wheeled and large carriers are turned away. On the boat, a pet has to fit in one of the small hard cages kept at the Otemae and Fureai Hiroba landings
Hanami picnics under the cherry trees are fine in Jozan Park, but fires, barbecues, smoking and drones are not
Don't Miss
The Basement: Prayer Tablets and the Well
You enter through the attached turret, built with two small square courts to slow attackers down, and climb into the basement, walled by the stone base and once the keep's store of salt for a siege. When the prayer tablets turned up in 2012, nothing on them named the keep; researchers searching down here by torchlight found a small hole in the pillar beside the well that matched their nail holes exactly. Replicas are nailed up the way the originals were, and the well itself, once 24 m deep, is half filled in. The old shachi taken off the roof in the 1950s repair are on show here too.
Paulownia Stairs and the Tengu-no-ma
The stairs from the first floor to the fourth are paulownia boards about 10 cm thick, probably chosen because the wood resists fire and rot, and on the first and fourth floors a sliding door could be pulled across the stairwell to close it off. On the flight from the second floor to the third you can see what holds the keep up: timber was short when it was built, so instead of one giant central pillar, 96 of its pillars each run through two floors. The top floor, the Tengu-no-ma, has a railing instead of walls and looks out on every side over the moats and rooftops to Lake Shinji.
The Horikawa Moat Boat
Small covered boats take about 50 minutes to loop 3.7 km of moats and canals, passing under the castle's stone walls, along the samurai street and through the town before a quiet wooded stretch on the west side. You sit on the floor with your shoes off, and at four of the 17 bridges the roof comes down and everyone ducks. The ¥2,000 ticket is good all day at all three landings. From early November to early April the boats carry kotatsu, quilt-covered tables heated with charcoal briquettes, and in July and August the wind-chime boats run.
Shiomi Nawate and Lafcadio Hearn's House
Shiomi Nawate, the street along the north moat, is lined with pines and the walls of samurai houses. At its west end is the samurai house that Lafcadio Hearn, the writer who retold Japan's ghost stories in Kwaidan, rented with his wife Setsu for about five months in 1891. He loved the garden that wraps round three sides of it and wrote about it in "In a Japanese Garden". The house is ¥400 and the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum next door ¥600. If you watched Bakebake, NHK's 2025-26 morning drama based on Setsu and Hearn, you have seen it already: from episode 71 Toki and Hebun live in a studio copy of this house, down to the crape myrtle in the garden.
The Keep After Dark
The keep is lit until 10 PM, which makes the path along the moat a good walk after dinner. On weekends and holidays from September 26 to October 18, 2026, the Matsue Suitoro festival lines the paths around the castle with paper lanterns, painted by local people and contest entrants, from 6 to 9 PM, and food stalls open on the same evenings.
What to Do Here
8:30 AM Keep Climb
Come in at the Otemae entrance just before 8 AM, when the Honmaru opens. Just inside, the Umadamari courtyard faces the castle's tallest stone wall, 13 m high; on the long Honzaka stairs above it, look for the heart-shaped stone in the wall. Be at the keep door for 8:30, climb straight to the Tengu-no-ma, and take in the lower floors on the way back down.
Tips:
- Buy the ticket online and you can walk past the window straight to the keep entrance; the three-site ticket is sold only online
- There are no toilets in the keep; the nearest are by the Ni-no-mon gate on the Ninomaru upper level
- The 100 Castles stamp is inside the keep, to the left of the reception counter; the gojoin (castle seal) is sold only at the Buratto Matsue tourist office
- Kounkaku, the green Western-style building behind Matsue Shrine, was built in 1903 to lodge Emperor Meiji on a visit that never happened; the future Emperor Taisho stayed there instead in 1907, and it is free to go in
Moat Boat and Samurai Street Half Day
After the keep, board at the Otemae landing next to the car park. Boats from there head up the north moat along Shiomi Nawate and stop at the Fureai Hiroba landing, the nearest to the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum. Get off, see Hearn's museum and house, walk the samurai street as far as the Samurai Residence and back, then board again at Fureai Hiroba for the rest of the loop: the wooded west side, the town, and back round to Otemae.
Tips:
- Boats leave the Otemae landing every 15-20 minutes and Fureai Hiroba every 20-30; the last are at 5 PM from March to September and 4 PM from October to February, and boarding closes 10 minutes before
- The ¥1,760 three-site web ticket covers the castle, the Hearn Memorial Museum and the Samurai Residence, and gets you a discount on the boat and at Hearn's former residence (¥400)
- Food is not allowed on the boats because of the low bridges; drinks with lids are fine
- There is no foreign visitor discount on the boat
Castle to Lake Shinji Sunset
Climb the keep in the late afternoon, before last entry, then walk south through the old town to the Shimane Art Museum on the shore of Lake Shinji. The museum was designed for the sunset, with a wall of glass on the lake side. On the lawn by the water, twelve bronze rabbits run in a curving line; the story goes that stroking the second from the water while facing west brings happiness. Walk back after dark to see the keep lit up.
Tips:
- From March to September the Shimane Art Museum stays open until 30 minutes after sunset; from October to February it closes at 6:30 PM, and it is closed on Tuesdays
- The glass-walled lobby and the lakeside lawn are free; the rooftop terrace needs a gallery ticket (¥400 for the collection)
- The Lake Line bus runs a few late-afternoon loops on its Yomegashima route, timed for the sunset and stopping at the art museum; the times change every month
Plan Your Visit
Opening Hours
keep
8:30 AM – 6:00 PM from April to September (last entry 5:30 PM); 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM from October to March (last entry 4:30 PM)
grounds
The Honmaru, the walled enclosure round the keep, is free to enter: 8:00 AM – 6:30 PM from April to September, 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM from October to March
closed Days
Open every day of the year; hours can change for events
repairs
Reiwa repair, June 2027 to December 2030 (Matsue City's plan; the dates may change): open as normal until May 2027, then closed for about four months while a protective shelter goes up, open inside the shelter during the roof work, and closed for about four months more while it comes down
light Up
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM from April to September, 5:00 PM – 10:00 PM from October to March
Best Time to Visit
Be there for the 8:30 AM opening. Jozan Park is one of Japan's 100 best cherry blossom sites, and in Matsue full bloom has come between March 27 and April 3 every year since 2021. On autumn weekends to October 18, 2026, the Suitoro lantern festival fills the evenings. To see the outside of the keep without a shelter round it, come before June 2027.
Avoid:
Cherry blossom weekends in late March and early April, and Golden Week
Nearby
Matsue History Museum
The city's history museum, by the Otemae boat landing, holds the original 1611 prayer tablets; ¥700, or ¥1,520 with the castle on the two-site ticket.
700 m
Shiomi Nawate
The pine-lined samurai street along the castle's north moat, free to walk, with the Samurai Residence (¥400) halfway along.
650 m
Lafcadio Hearn's Former Residence and Memorial Museum
Hearn's rented samurai house and the museum next door, at the west end of Shiomi Nawate; both open 9 AM – 6 PM (to 5 PM October to March).
1 km
Shimane Art Museum
Lakeside museum built for watching the sun set over Lake Shinji; the glass-walled lobby and the lawn by the water are free.
2.3 km
Gallery
The shachi on the left of the top ridge, the male, is 2.08 m tall: the largest wooden shachi in Japan
The boats have been circling the castle moats since July 1997
The street is named for the Shiomi, chief retainers to the Matsue lords, whose house stood here
Kameda-yama, the keep's hill, is only 29 m above sea level, yet the top floor sees across the city to the lake
History
founding
After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Horio Tadauji was given Izumo and Oki and moved into Gassan-Toda Castle, an old mountain stronghold inland that proved awkward to govern from. Tadauji died in 1604, and his father, Horio Yoshiharu, ruling for his six-year-old grandson, chose Kameda-yama, a low hill by Lake Shinji, and began building in 1607. The keep was finished by the New Year of 1611. Yoshiharu died that June, so the old story that he died just before it was done is wrong.
significance
The keep has four roof tiers outside and five floors and a basement inside, and stands about 30 m above the ground of the Honmaru; of the twelve original keeps, only Himeji's has more floor space. It became a National Treasure in 1935, was reclassified as an Important Cultural Property when the heritage law of 1950 replaced the old one, and with no proof of when it was finished it stayed one for 65 years. The proof was two prayer tablets that had been missing since 1937: the city put up a ¥5 million reward, and in 2012 its own staff found them at Matsue Shrine, a short walk below the keep. The shrine turned the reward down. The keep was named a National Treasure again on July 8, 2015.
reconstruction
The keep has never burned or been rebuilt from scratch, but it nearly went the way of the rest of the castle. When the abolition order reached Matsue in 1875, the turrets, gates and palaces were sold off and pulled down, and the keep itself was priced at ¥180. Katsube Hon'emon, a wealthy farmer whose family ran copper mines for the old domain, and his son, together with Takagi Gonpachi, a former retainer of the domain, paid out of their own pockets to keep it standing. The Meiji repair of 1894 drew on donations from the townspeople, and in 1950-55 the whole keep was taken apart and put back together. The Reiwa repair of 2027-30 will bring down and check every roof tile and mend the walls, but will not dismantle the frame.
name Origin
Chidori-jo, Plover Castle, is the castle's nickname, and even the city's historians cannot say for sure where it came from. The usual answer is the big gables on all four sides, spread like a plover's wings. Another candidate turned up in 2016: a castle map from the 1640s shows smaller triangular chidori gables on the keep, and the city found holes in the second-floor pillars on the east side that line up with them. They were probably removed in a major repair of 1738-43, along with curved kara-hafu gables whose traces you can still see on the fourth floor.
Getting There
Lake Line Loop Bus
Station: JR Matsue Station to Kokuho Matsue-jo (Otemae)
Walk: 2 minutes to the Otemae entrance
Buses leave every 30 minutes from 9 AM and take 10 minutes. The loop carries on to Shiomi Nawate and the Hearn museum.
Walking from JR Matsue Station
Station: Matsue Station (JR San'in Line)
Walk: About 30 minutes (2 km to the Otemae entrance)
Flat the whole way, crossing the Ohashi River. From Matsue Shinjiko Onsen Station on the Ichibata line it is about 15 minutes.
Yakumo Limited Express from Okayama
Station: Okayama Station to Matsue Station
Walk: Then the Lake Line or a 30-minute walk
Hourly, 2 hours 35-45 minutes through the mountains; every Yakumo stops at Bitchu-Takahashi for Bitchu-Matsuyama Castle. From Izumo Airport, buses reach JR Matsue Station in about 35 minutes (¥1,300).
Location
1-5 Tonomachi, Matsue, Shimane 690-0887
Nearest: Matsue Station (JR San'in Line) (2 km, about 30 minutes on foot, or 10 minutes on the Lake Line loop bus to the Kokuho Matsue-jo Otemae stop)
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