Ozu Castle

Ozu Castle stands on a rise above the Hiji River. Its keep was pulled down in the Meiji period and rebuilt in 2004, in timber and to the old form, and four turrets from the Edo period stand around it.

There was a castle here from the end of the Kamakura period, when Utsunomiya Toyofusa, governor of Iyo, is said to have built a fort on the hill.

What stands now is the work of the lords who followed. Through the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the place passed through several hands, among them Kobayakawa Takakage, Toda Katsutaka, Todo Takatora, Wakisaka Yasuharu and Kato Sadayasu, and each of them built on it, turning a medieval hill fort into a castle of the modern kind.

The keep was taken down in the Meiji period, as many were, and for a century the castle had only its turrets.

It was rebuilt in 2004. Unlike most reconstructed keeps in Japan, which are concrete, this one is timber, put together as the original was, and its form is not guesswork: old drawings, photographs and a wooden model made in the nineteenth century survived and were used to work from.

Four turrets came through from the Edo period and are still here, so the reconstructed keep stands among original buildings rather than alone.

The castle keeps a matchlock corps, which drills in public; visitors can be dressed as warlords; and the keep and one of the turrets can be stayed in overnight.