Like the Matsumoto Castle in Nagano, the Nagoya Castle is a flatland castle. That is, it was built on a plain, rather than on a more defensible mountain-top or riverbank. The shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu chose the site because it lay along the Tokaido highway which linked Edo (Tokyo) with Kyoto.
In fact, Nagoya Castle was not the first fortification built there. Shiba Takatsune built the first fort there in the late 1300s. The first castle was built on the site c. 1525 by the Imagawa family. In 1532 the Oda clan daimyo, Oda Nobuhide, defeated Imagawa Ujitoyo and captured the castle. His son, Oda Nobunaga (aka "Demon King") was born there in 1534.
The castle was abandoned shortly thereafter, and fell into ruin. In 1610, Tokugawa Ieyasu started a two-year long construction project to create the modern version of Nagoya Castle. He built the castle for his seventh son, Tokugawa Yoshinao. The shogun used pieces of the demolished Kiyosu Castle for building material, and weakened local daimyo by making them pay for the construction.
As many as 200,000 workers spent 6 months building the stone fortifications. The donjon (main tower) was completed in 1612, and construction of the secondary buildings continued for several more years.
Nagoya Castle remained a stronghold of the most powerful of the three branches of the Tokugawa family, the Owari Tokugawa, until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
In 1868, imperial forces seized the castle and used it as an Imperial Army barracks. Many of the treasures inside were damaged or destroyed by the soldiers.
The Imperial family took over the castle in 1895, and used it as a palace. In 1930, the Emperor gave the castle to the city of Nagoya.
During World War II, the castle was used as a POW camp. On May 14, 1945, an American fire-bombing raid scored a direct hit on the castle, burning the majority of it to the ground. Only a gateway and three corner towers survived.
Between 1957 and 1959, a concrete reproduction of the destroyed portions was constructed on the site. It looks perfect from the outside, but the interior receives less-than-rave reviews.
The replica includes two of the famous kinshachi (or tiger-faced dolphins) made of gold-plated copper, each more than eight feet long. The shachi are thought to ward off fire, a somewhat dubious claim given the molten fate of the originals, and cost $120,000 to create.
Today, the castle serves as a museum.
