- Built: 1585, Tokugawa Ieyasu
- Type: Flatland hirajiro
- Demolished: 1869
- Reconstructed: 1989, 1996 (yagura)
- Location: Shizuoka, Suruga province
- Japanese: 駿府城 (Sunpu-jou)
Sunpu-jô was among Tokugawa Ieyasu's main bases of operations prior to his establishing himself in Edo. He also retired to Sunpu in 1606 after passing the shogunate to his son, Tokugawa Hidetada.
In 1610, when Ieyasu met with Shimazu Iehisa and prisoner of war King Shô Nei of Ryûkyû at Sunpu, the castle featured three concentric rings of moats, and a five-story (seven floors) main keep tower (tenshu) decorated in gold, silver, tin, and bronze. By this time, Sunpu was a small but respectable castle-town, with some 12,000 residents.[1]
Roughly half the castle was destroyed by fire in 1635. As the territory was directly controlled by the shogunate, there was no castellan, and the tenshu was not rebuilt. Today, the ninomaru area has been made a public park. One yagura (tower) and the East Gate have been reconstructed.
Link
References
- Nihon no Meijo
- "Shizuoka wo aruku" 静岡を歩く, Momoto モモト 14 (April 2013), n.p.
- ↑ Cesare Polenghi, Samurai of Ayutthaya: Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese warrior and merchant in early seventeenth-century Siam. Bangkok: White Lotus Press (2009), 13.
