Qualla: Maizuru Castle Park

Maizuru Castle Park: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit さかおり (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Shinsengumi were too slow. In March 1868, as the Tokugawa shogunate collapsed, the famed swordsmen-turned-soldiers marched west from Edo under Kondo Isami with orders to seize Kofu Castle before the Imperial army could reach it. They arrived to find the enemy already behind the walls. The Battle of Katsunuma that followed was a rout, and Kondo would be captured and beheaded weeks later. It was a fitting final chapter for a castle that had changed hands through betrayal, assassination, and political maneuvering for nearly three centuries. Today, the massive stone walls of Kofu Castle rise from the center of the city as Maizuru Castle Park, a ten-minute walk from the train station, its terraces open to the public since 1904.

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Image: さかおり (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Maizuru Castle Park: Before the Castle, a Flood

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit そらみみ, CC BY-SA 3.0. Kofu Castle exists because Takeda Shingen tamed the water. The city of Kofu sits at the confluence of the Kamanashi and Fuefuki Rivers in the Kofu Basin, a natural bowl ringed by mountains in Yamanashi Prefecture. Before the Sengoku period warlord spent twenty years building floo...

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Image: そらみみ | CC BY-SA 3.0

Maizuru Castle Park: Black Tower, Gold Tiles

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yamaguchi Yoshiaki from Japan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Kato Mitsuyasu died in 1593 before finishing the castle. Asano Nagamasa, Hideyoshi's step-brother-in-law, completed it that same year. What he built was formidable. The castle spread in a T-shape along the ridge of the hill, its main body running east to west across terraces span...

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Image: Yamaguchi Yoshiaki from Japan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Maizuru Castle Park: The Shogun's Retreat That Never Was

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit でここ, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kofu Castle's strategic role as the shogun's emergency refuge shaped its political importance far beyond its military use. The Tokugawa installed cadet branches of the ruling family as its lords, treating the appointment as a mark of high favor. When Tokugawa Tsunatoyo, the daimy...

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Image: でここ | CC BY-SA 4.0

Maizuru Castle Park: Stones That Remember

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sakaori (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Meiji government ordered all old fortifications destroyed in 1877, and Kofu Castle's remaining structures were pulled down. The outer grounds became the site of Kofu Station on the JR East Chuo Main Line, and government offices took over other parcels. But the massive stone w...

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Image: Sakaori (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0