Uwajima Castle
宇和島城
A small keep built to impress in the 1660s, on the wooded hill of a five-sided castle that a shogunate spy took for a square
About Uwajima Castle
Uwajima Castle's keep is a compact three-tier tower finished around 1666 by Date Munetoshi, the second Date lord of Uwajima, and one of Japan's twelve original keeps. It went up well into the Edo peace, and it shows: white plaster all over, ornamental gables on every tier, and hardly a thought for defence. It stands on a 73 m hill in the middle of town, and the way up is stone steps through a forest that has escaped fire and felling for at least 300 years, past walls left from Todo Takatora's first castle of 1601.
Essential Tips
Allow about 35 minutes from JR Uwajima Station to the keep: 15 minutes on the flat to the north gate, then the climb on stone steps and slopes, so wear shoes with grip
The hill opens at 6 AM, three hours before the keep: time enough to walk the walls first and be at the keep door for 9 AM
Shiroshita, the tourist information centre beside the north gate, is open 9 AM to 6 PM (closed December 31 and January 1), has a multipurpose toilet, and sells castle and Date family goods you can only buy there
No guides are stationed at the castle; for a guided visit, ask the Uwajima tourism association (0895-49-5700)
In 2026 the keep's floodlights turn pink on October 1-7, blue on November 9-23 and rainbow-coloured on December 4-10, each for an awareness campaign
See the Date Museum before it closes on March 29, 2027: its farewell exhibition opens on January 23, and the new museum in Tensha Park is due in spring 2028
Don't Miss
Gables, Crests and Gun Racks
Every tier carries curved Chinese-style and triangular gables, with the Date crests in the gable ends and their nine-star crest on the roof tiles. The door is an open porch under a curved roof, and there is not one loophole or stone-dropping chute in the walls. Look under the windows, though: they sit at waist height with gun racks beneath, so defenders could still fire straight out. On the first floor is a 1/10 scale model of the keep, accurate to the thickness of the pillars and made for the great repair of 1860, as a tag nailed to a tie beam records; other castles have old models too, but few have kept both an Edo-period keep and a dated model of it.
The Five-Sided Castle
Todo Takatora laid out the outer moats as an irregular pentagon. A shogunate spy's report gave the castle four sides, 14 cho (about 1.5 km) around, and the story grew that Takatora had planned the mistake: attackers preparing for four sides would leave the fifth unwatched, free for sorties, supplies or escape. The moats were filled in between 1900 and 1913, but today's streets still follow their lines, and the Oshiroshita map on the city's castle website lays the late-Edo town over the modern one.
Stone Walls from 1601 to the 1850s
The way the stone is worked tells you roughly when each wall went up. Beside the Shiroyama Kyodokan, the Tobei-maru walls are Takatora's, unworked fieldstone laid in a straight, uncurved slope around 1601; the tallest, 13 m, is said to have been among the highest in Japan in its day, and a corner nearby may be older still, from the 1590s. Around the children's park, the Nagato-maru walls of Munetoshi's rebuild have neatly squared corner blocks, wedge holes where the masons split the stone, and here and there a stone pitted by the sea and by boring shellfish. The tallest wall in the castle, a 15 m corner of close-fitted cut stone at the Daiemon-maru, is a repair of around 1851.
The Noboritachimon Gate
The gate at the foot of the southern path is a yakuimon, the style used for the main gates of samurai houses, and among the largest of its kind still standing in Japan. Scientific dating of one rear post shows its hemlock was cut down some time after 1430-1530, which leaves room for the gate to date from Takatora's building work of 1596-1601; it is the only one left of the seven gates that once stood between here and the keep. The bronze statue in front is Kojima Iken, the Uwajima-born chief justice who defied the government to protect the courts' independence in the 1891 Otsu Incident.
What to Do Here
North Gate Up, South Gate Down
From JR Uwajima Station walk about 15 minutes to the north gate, the gatehouse of the Kori family, chief retainers to the Date lords. It lost most of its left wing when it was moved here in 1952; the Shiroshita tourist information centre is next door. Climb to the keep, then start down the southern path at the Shiroyama Kyodokan, a free museum of Uwajima's notable people in an armoury built in 1845, and follow it past the Daiemon-maru walls and out through the Noboritachimon. The Date Museum and Tenshaen are both within 10 minutes' walk of the bottom.
Tips:
- The loop still works while the southern path is partly closed: the open stretch runs from the Kyodokan down to the Noboritachimon. At the north gate, under repair until March 2027, go round by the detour on the right
- The 100 Castles stamp is inside the keep, and the gojoin (castle seal, ¥300), the castle's record of your climb, is sold only at the keep counter
- Smoking is banned on the whole hill; dogs are allowed on a short lead (about 1.5 m) but not inside the keep or the Kyodokan
The Date Story: Keep, Museum and Garden
One ticket covers the keep and the two places at the foot of the hill that tell the Date family's story. The Date Museum shows the family's armour, documents and bridal furnishings, and once a year a portrait of Toyotomi Hideyoshi that is an Important Cultural Property. Tenshaen next door is the stroll garden the seventh lord, Date Munetada, finished in 1866 for his retirement, now a National Place of Scenic Beauty. Its 18 kinds of bamboo honour the family's bamboo-and-sparrow crest; white wisteria hangs from an arched trellis over the pond, and the irises bloom in early June.
Tips:
- The Date Museum opens 9 AM to 5 PM (last entry 4:30 PM) and closes on Tuesdays (the next weekday when Tuesday is a holiday), and for a few days between exhibitions
- Tenshaen opens 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM (to 5 PM from April to June); it closes December 28 to January 1, and on Mondays from the second Monday of December to the end of February (the Tuesday when Monday is a holiday)
- For the overprint stamp rally, press two colours in the keep, two in the museum and one at Tenshaen's reception onto the same card, one over another, to build up a picture of the castle
Bull Sumo in Uwajima
Uwajima's bullfighting sets bull against bull with no matador: the bouts have no time limit, and the bull that turns and runs loses. There are only four regular tournaments a year, in the domed city arena on top of Maruyama hill, and since 2024 the summer one has been held on July 23, during the Warei festival. Climb the castle in the morning, then ride the free shuttle to the arena for the noon start.
Tips:
- Bouts run from noon to about 2 PM; doors open at 10 AM and all seats are unreserved
- Advance tickets are ¥2,500 at FamilyMart stores, ¥3,000 on the door, ¥2,000 for 65 and over; junior high school age and younger go free
- Free shuttle buses run from the Uwajima bus centre and from outside JR Uwajima Station every half hour between 10 AM and noon on tournament days, and back to the station after the last bout
Plan Your Visit
Opening Hours
keep
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM March to October; 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM November to February
castle Hill
6:00 AM – 6:30 PM March to October, 6:00 AM – 5:00 PM November to February; free
kyodokan
The Shiroyama Kyodokan museum on the hill keeps the same hours as the keep; free
closed Days
Open every day; the keep can close at short notice in typhoons and other severe weather
paths
A slope collapse closed the southern path from the Noboritachimon gate on July 4, 2026. It reopened on August 1 as far as the Shiroyama Kyodokan, but its branch to the children's park is still closed. The north gate is under repair until March 2027, and walkers go round it by a detour on the right as they face it.
light Up
The keep is floodlit from sunset to 10 PM, but the hill closes at 6:30 PM (5 PM in winter), so watch it from the town
Best Time to Visit
Late March to early April, when Somei-yoshino cherries bloom in the Honmaru around the keep and in the children's park below; from 2022 to 2025 they reached full bloom between March 27 and April 1. The pale pink usubeni-kanzakura in the Honmaru flower about three weeks earlier, in early March. In summer, come for the Ushioni and Warei festivals of July 22-24, when the ushioni, ox-demon floats 5 to 6 m long carried by dozens of young men, parade through the town.
Avoid:
Cherry blossom weekends at the end of March and in early April
Nearby
Date Museum (Uwajima Date Hakubutsukan)
Opened in 1974 on the site of a Date family residence; ¥500, closed Tuesdays, and shut for about a year from March 29, 2027.
430 m from the Noboritachimon
Tenshaen
A pond garden that borrows the Onigajo mountains behind the town as its backdrop; ¥500, closed on Mondays in winter.
560 m from the Noboritachimon
Warei Shrine
Shrine to Yanbe Seibei, a chief retainer killed in 1620 after rivals slandered him, 10 minutes' walk from JR Uwajima Station. At about 9 PM on July 24, the end of its festival, three portable shrines are carried into the torchlit river in front of it.
1.2 km from the north gate
Gallery
Even the window bars are five-sided in section, shaped to make it easier to see out
The double tie beams and the lightly trimmed log used as the inner lintel are marks of an early gate
Unworked fieldstone is the mark of the castle's oldest walls, laid around 1600
The name Tenshaen, 'heaven's pardon', comes from a poem Date Masamune wrote late in life
History
founding
Tradition has a fort built on this hill in 941, during the campaign against the pirate leader Fujiwara no Sumitomo, and a medieval castle called Itajima Marugushi held it through the wars of the 1500s. Todo Takatora, one of the great castle builders of his age, received the district in 1595 and from 1596 to 1601 built a new castle here, with the sea on most sides of the hill and seawater moats on the east. Date Hidemune, eldest son of the one-eyed warlord Date Masamune, arrived in 1615 to rule a domain of 100,000 koku, and nine generations of Date lords held it until 1868.
significance
The keep has been protected since 1934 and is an Important Cultural Property, and the whole hill has been a National Historic Site since 1937. Takatora's keep was a lookout-type tower set on bare rock; Munetoshi replaced it with a layered keep on a stone base, the latest style of the day, but kept Takatora's layout of walls and moats. The eighth lord, Date Munenari, was counted among the four wise lords of the shogunate's last years, with the lords of Fukui, Tosa and Satsuma.
reconstruction
Munetoshi rebuilt the castle between 1661 and 1672. He told the shogunate he was repairing the keep, but his petition of 1662 lists rotten sills, pillars and beams in a keep built only 61 years before, and what went up was new from its stone base to its roof. The keep was repaired in 1860 after damage in the Ansei earthquake of 1854, taken apart and reassembled in 1960-62, and given to the city with the hill by the Date family in 1949. Most other buildings went after the Meiji Restoration, and the Otemon, known as too grand a gate for a 100,000-koku domain, burned in the air raid of July 12, 1945; its gatehouse, about 24 m long, was longer than the Otemon that still stands at Kochi Castle.
name Origin
Itajima was the old name of the place, and the castle was called Itajima Marugushi until the name Uwajima Castle came into use around 1617, two years after the Date arrived. Its other name, Tsurushima-jo (Crane Island Castle), is the one the town's folk song, Uwajima Kouta, uses.
Getting There
JR Limited Express Uwakai from Matsuyama
Station: Matsuyama Station to Uwajima Station
Walk: 15 minutes (1 km) to the foot of the hill, about 35 minutes to the keep
1 hour 20 to 35 minutes with no change, about once an hour (on the half hour from 10:30 AM); Uwajima is the end of the line. The last Uwakai back to Matsuyama leaves Uwajima at 9:25 PM.
On Foot from Uwajima Station
Station: Uwajima Station
Walk: About 15 minutes (1 km) to the north gate; about 20 minutes (1.3 km) to the Noboritachimon
The north gate, by the Shiroshita tourist information centre, is the nearer start. The Noboritachimon on the south side is closer to the Date Museum and Tenshaen, so going up from the north and down to the south saves walking.
By Car
Station: Uwajima-Asahi IC (Matsuyama Expressway)
Walk: Car park at the foot of the hill
About 1 km (4 minutes) from the interchange, which is 83.5 km from Matsuyama IC; it is a half interchange, with ramps to and from the Matsuyama direction only. Motorbikes are not allowed in the car park and use a separate bike park on the main road.
Location
Marunouchi, Uwajima, Ehime 798-0060
Nearest: Uwajima Station (JR Yosan Line) (1 km and about 15 minutes to the foot of the hill, about 35 minutes to the keep)
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