Tottori Castle

Timeline

1. 1532-1555

   Founding by the Yamana clan

   During the Tenbun era, the Yamana shugo of Inaba Province construct a yamashiro on Mount Kyusho, exploiting its steep natural slopes for defense.

2. 1573

   Yamana Toyokuni becomes castle lord

   Allied with Amago remnants, Yamana Toyokuni forces Takeda Takanobu to surrender, and the Inaba Yamana clan moves its seat to Tottori Castle.

3. 1580

   Hideyoshi's first siege

   Hashiba Hideyoshi's three-month investment ends when Yamana Toyokuni accepts terms and pledges fealty to Oda Nobunaga.

4. 1581

   Starvation siege and Tsuneie's seppuku

   After a four-month food blockade, the Mori-aligned lord Kikkawa Tsuneie commits seppuku to spare his garrison, and the castle falls in the campaign's most brutal episode.

5. 1600

   Ikeda Nagayoshi takes possession

   Following Sekigahara, Ikeda Nagayoshi receives a 60,000-koku domain and begins a thorough rebuild as an early-modern castle.

6. 1617

   Ikeda Mitsumasa's grand expansion

   With a 325,000-koku domain spanning Inaba and Hoki, Ikeda Mitsumasa expands Tottori Castle to a scale fit for a major daimyo.

7. 1692

   Keep lost to lightning

   A lightning strike destroys the two-story keep on the summit bailey, and no replacement was ever built.

8. 1873

   Abolition of castles

   Transferred to the Ministry of the Army, the castle was largely demolished after Tottori Prefecture was folded into Shimane Prefecture in 1876.

9. 1943

   Great Tottori Earthquake

   The earthquake collapses the north face of the keep platform's stone wall — a section that remains unrestored to this day.

10. 1957

    National Historic Site designation

    Designated a National Historic Site, with the protected area expanded in 1987 to include the Taikoganaru siege encirclement.

11. 2006

    Top 100 Castles selection

    The Japan Castle Foundation lists Tottori Castle as No. 63 in Japan's Top 100 Castles, and a 30-year timber-restoration program is launched.

12. 2011

    Spherical stone wall restored

    Conservation of Tenkyumaru's late-Edo spherical reinforcement wall — Japan's only surviving example — is completed in May.

13. 2021

    Otemon main gate reconstructed in timber

    After construction from November 2019, the wooden Otemon main gate is opened to the public on 13 March 2021.

Detailed History

Tottori Castle's origins trace to the Tenbun era (1532-1555), when the Yamana clan — shugo of Inaba Province — built a yamashiro exploiting the natural defenses of Mount Kyusho. The first verified castellan is Takeda Takanobu in the Genki era, a Yamana retainer who carried out gekokujo (low-overthrows-high) and made Tottori his power base. In 1573, Yamana Toyokuni, allied with Amago remnants, took the castle and the seat of the Yamana clan moved here. The 1575 Geitan truce extended the Mori clan's reach over Inaba, and in 1580 Hashiba Hideyoshi's first siege ended with Toyokuni's surrender to Oda Nobunaga after a three-month investment. In 1581 the Mori dispatched their senior retainer Kikkawa Tsuneie as new castle lord, but Hideyoshi applied the food-cutoff tactics he had perfected at Miki Castle in Harima. He bought up surrounding rice at premium prices and constructed a 12-kilometre semi-circular encampment, the Taikoganaru, that severed every route into the castle. After three months the interior descended into famine, in a campaign posterity called the 'Tottori starvation killing'. On 25 October 1581 Tsuneie committed seppuku in exchange for his men's lives, and the castle fell. Miyabe Keijun then took control as castle warden and began converting the summit bailey into an early modern castle. After the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara, Miyabe Nagafusa was attainted as a Western Army adherent, and Ikeda Nagayoshi was installed with a 60,000-koku domain to lead a full early-modern reconstruction. In 1616 Ikeda Mitsumasa arrived with a vast 325,000-koku domain over Inaba and Hoki, expanding Tottori Castle to a scale befitting a major daimyo. The Ikeda line of Mitsunaka and his successors then ruled for twelve generations down to the Meiji Restoration. The 1873 abolition of castles transferred the site to the Ministry of the Army, and after Tottori Prefecture was folded into Shimane in 1876, the army demolished nearly every structure between 1877 and 1879, leaving only the Nakajikirimon gate and the makeup chamber of the Ogi-goten. The site was designated a National Historic Site in 1957, expanded in 1987 to include the Taikoganaru siege camp, and chosen as one of Japan's Top 100 Castles (No. 63) in 2006.

Cultural Significance

Tottori Castle is nicknamed the 'Museum of Castle Architecture' because it preserves layers of construction technique from the Sengoku period through the end of the Edo era in a single site. Walking the grounds traces three centuries of evolution: the Sengoku yamashiro at the summit, the late-16th-century early-modern conversion under Miyabe Keijun, and the Ikeda-era stone walls, moats, and the spherical wall of Tenkyumaru below. The Tenkyumaru maki-ishigaki — a half-dome reinforcement built in the late Edo period to brace a bulging older wall — is Japan's only known surviving example, and its 2011 restoration has drawn castle scholars and tourists alike. The 1581 starvation siege ranks among the three signature food-cutoff campaigns of Hideyoshi's Chugoku conquest, alongside the siege of Miki Castle and the flooding of Bitchu-Takamatsu, and is widely considered the most harrowing. Cannibalism passages in the Shincho-koki chronicle are now re-read by medical historians as evidence of acute starvation followed by refeeding syndrome. A bronze statue of Kikkawa Tsuneie erected at the main entrance in 1993 anchors local memorialization. Since 2006 a 30-year, 5.1-billion-yen plan has been underway to restore the castle to its late Edo timber appearance, and in March 2021 the wooden Otemon main gate was opened to the public.

Architectural Details

Tottori Castle is a tier-bailey fortress combining a mountain section on the 263-metre summit of Mount Kyusho with a hilltop section at the base — Tenkyumaru, Ninomaru, Sannomaru, and Uzenmaru — laid out in a 'teikaku' radial plan. Sengoku earthworks remain along the western, central, and eastern ridges, so visitors can read the entire arc from medieval yamashiro to early-modern citadel in a single visit. The summit keep platform measures roughly 20 metres north-south by 19 metres east-west — the largest turret base in the castle. The original three-story keep was reportedly relocated here from Fuse-Tenjinyama Castle; Ikeda Nagayoshi later reduced it to two stories to resist high winds, and a 1692 lightning strike burned it down for good. A 2.4-metre-deep cellar sits at the centre of the platform. The only surviving original gate, the Nakajikirimon, collapsed in a 1975 windstorm and was reconstructed in timber that autumn. Below, the Tenkyumaru maki-ishigaki is Japan's only surviving spherical stone wall, perfectly circular from above. Stonework throughout the site reads as a textbook progression: rough nozura-zumi from the Sengoku era, semi-dressed uchikomihagi, and precision-cut kirikomihagi of the Edo period. The Taikoganaru encirclement camp from Hideyoshi's 1581 siege is part of the protected historic site.