Kishiwada Castle

Kishiwada Castle is said to have been originally built in 1334 by Takaiye Wada, a member of Kusunoki Masashige’s clan. In 1585, Hideyoshi Hashiba appointed his uncle Hidemasa Koide as lord, and the castle grounds were developed and a main keep was constructed. From 1640, Nobukatsu Okabe served as lord and carried out major renovations, building the castle into a fully developed early-modern Japanese castle. The Okabe family ruled from here and governed the Kishiwada Domain until the Meiji Restoration. The castle’s keep was once destroyed by a lightning strike in 1827, and around the time of the Meiji Restoration, the remaining castle structures such as turrets and gates were destroyed by the lord himself, leaving little of the pre-modern layout except for the moat and stone walls. For this reason, although the original keep is believed to have had five tiers, the current keep is a three-tier, three-story structure, and its interior exhibits valuable historical materials. The garden within Kishiwada Castle, created in 1953 by Mirei Shigemori, is designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty. It is also affectionately known as the “Hachijin Garden.” The nearest stations are Nankai Kishiwada Station or Kaizuka-jizo (Takojizo) Station, about a 7-minute walk away.