Kagoshima Castle

is a Japanese castle

Japanese castle

' were fortresses composed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries, and came into their best-known form in the 16th century...

 in Kagoshima City

Kagoshima, Kagoshima

is the capital city of Kagoshima Prefecture at the southwestern tip of the Kyūshū island of Japan, and the largest city in the prefecture by some margin...

, Kagoshima Prefecture

Kagoshima Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu. The capital is the city of Kagoshima.- Geography :Kagoshima Prefecture is located at the southwest tip of Kyushu and includes a chain of islands stretching further to the southwest for a few hundred kilometers...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The other name of this castle is Tsurumarujo.

History

This castle was constructed by Shimazu Iehisa

Shimazu Iehisa

was a Japanese samurai of the Sengoku period, who was a member of the Shimazu clan of Satsuma Province. He served in a command capacity during his family's campaign to conquer Kyūshū....

 in 1601. In 1600 Shimazu Yoshihiro

Shimazu Yoshihiro

was the second son of Shimazu Takahisa and younger brother of Shimazu Yoshihisa. It had traditionally been believed that he became the seventeenth head of the Shimazu clan after Yoshihisa, but it is currently believed that he let Yoshihisa keep his position....

, the father of Iehisa, was defeated at the Battle of Sekigahara

Battle of Sekigahara

The , popularly known as the , was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 which cleared the path to the Shogunate for Tokugawa Ieyasu...

 as a daimyo of the western alliance, by the eastern alliance led by Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu

 was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan , which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara  in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but...

. This castle was built after the defeat and in the severe political tension with Ieyasu.

This castle is notable for the small scale and fairly poor quality as a main castle of one of the richest daimyo

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

in Japan. It is said that Shimazu was afraid of giving the Tokugawa an excuse to attack Shimazu territory by making too large a castle.

Literature