History of Fushimi: Azuchi-Momoyama to Early Edo — Hideyoshi’s Castle Building, Ieyasu’s Political Base and the Development of the Castle Town

About the Appeal of Fushimi-Momoyama

Fushimi Castle was not a castle with a single keep used in the same place for generation after generation. It went through stages: the residence Toyotomi Hideyoshi built at Shigetsu, the castle that expanded it, the castle moved to Mt. Kohata after the earthquake, and the castle rebuilt by Tokugawa Ieyasu. Along with the changes to the castle, the layout of the daimyo residences and the routes of the streets also changed. [3, 62]

Otesuji and the town names derived from daimyo convey the history of that castle town. On the other hand, the replica keep seen today as “Fushimi Momoyama Castle” is a building from 1964. This article traces separately the buildings that survive, the remains discovered underground, and the form of the castle as inferred from documents. [3]

The 1592 retirement residence was expanded into a castle from 1594

In 1591 Hideyoshi handed over the position of kampaku (imperial regent) and the Jurakudai palace in Kyoto to his nephew Toyotomi Hidetsugu, and in the following year, 1592, he began building a residence for his retirement on the hill of Shigetsu overlooking the Uji River. Shigetsu had an earlier history as the site of the palace of the Fushimi-no-miya, a family of the imperial line. Land use in the Heian and medieval periods is introduced in Fushimi Before the Castle. [63]

After Hideyoshi’s son Toyotomi Hideyori was born in 1593, expansion into a fortified castle with a keep and stone walls proceeded from 1594. A 2026 explanation by the Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute distinguishes between the residence from 1592 and the stage from 1594 when it was developed as a full-fledged castle. Even when this is summed up in a single phrase as “built in 1592,” it does not mean that a completed great castle existed from the start. [61, 62]

However, in the great earthquake of 1596, the palace buildings, gates and other structures collapsed. Hideyoshi moved the castle to Mt. Kohata to the northeast and rebuilt it, and he died in that castle in 1598. The area around the present Mausoleum of Emperor Meiji corresponds to the site of the main enclosure (honmaru) of this castle on Mt. Kohata. [3, 61]

Across the Uji River stood another castle: Mukaijima Castle

Mukaijima Castle (Mukaijima-jo) was a castle attached to Fushimi Castle, built by Hideyoshi on the south bank of the Uji River. If Fushimi Castle is thought of only as the castle on the hill to the east, this base established on the opposite bank drops out of the picture. According to the Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education’s description of the site, construction began in 1594, work continued even after the keep and other structures collapsed in the 1596 earthquake, and the castle was completed in 1597. While Shigetsu Castle was moved to Mt. Kohata after the earthquake, at Mukaijima the castle was rebuilt on the same south bank. [DXH001]

The Bungo Bridge was built between Mukaijima Castle and Fushimi Castle. It corresponds to today’s Kangetsu Bridge. A reference answer in which the Kyoto City Library organized historical sources and research publications explains that work at Mukaijima is thought to have begun in the winter of 1594 or the spring of the following year, and that it was hit by a flood in 1595 and then by the earthquake. Developing a riverside castle required not only the work of constructing buildings but also the work of repairing what the floods had destroyed. [DXH002]

After Hideyoshi’s death, Ieyasu temporarily made Mukaijima Castle his residence. The arrangement combining the main castle on the north bank, the attached castle on the south bank and the bridge linking them shows that Fushimi was a political base spanning the river. Present-day town names such as Mukaijima Honmaru-cho are clues to its location. However, it cannot be stated flatly that “nothing remains of the castle site.” The prefecture’s site description notes that land divisions and differences in ground level remain at the sites of the main and second enclosures (honmaru and ninomaru), and that stone wall materials were detected in investigations. This does not mean that the castle’s buildings can be seen as they were in today’s residential area. [DXH001, DXH002]

Earthquake damage is known not only from later pictures but also from traces in the ground

The nishiki-e woodblock prints depicting the 1596 earthquake convey the event of the castle’s collapse to later eras. Meanwhile, the investigation findings introduced by the Kyoto City Archaeological Museum in 2026 include a large-scale feature in the Fushimi castle town where artifacts damaged in the disaster were discarded together. Pictures depicting the scene of buildings collapsing and artifacts left in the ground in the course of clearing up show the same disaster from different angles. [DXH004]

In the lowlands around Fushimi, liquefaction and sand boils caused by earthquakes have also been studied. A sand boil is a phenomenon in which a water-bearing sand layer is shaken and sand and water spurt up through cracks in the ground. At the Kizugawa Riverbed Site in Yawata City, these cracks cut through old dwelling remains and ditches, and the timing of the earthquake was examined from their chronological relationship to the remaining strata and features. This is not the discovery of the site of Shigetsu Castle’s keep itself, but evidence for studying, from the ground, the shaking experienced by the southern part of the Kyoto Basin. [DXH005]

After the earthquake, Hideyoshi moved the center of the castle to Mt. Kohata. However, it is also not accurate to think of the castle on Mt. Kohata as a Tokugawa castle that was entirely rebuilt anew. The prefecture’s site description explains that while buildings were rebuilt and renovated after the fighting of 1600, the basic structure of the Toyotomi period was carried over, as seen in the names of the kuruwa—the enclosures within a castle divided by moats, stone walls and the like—and in the surviving stone walls. The renewal of the castle’s buildings and the continuity of the enclosures created by cutting and filling the land need to be looked at separately. [DXH001]

Contemporary diaries recorded different damage at each castle

Nishiyama Akihito, who studied earthquake damage through historical sources, compared several diaries in a lecture abstract published in 2011. The Tokitsune-kyo ki of the court noble Yamashina Tokitsune records the collapse of the keep, and the Gien Jugo Nikki of Gien, a monk of Daigoji Temple, records gates and palace buildings badly damaged or collapsed. The Takasuke Sukune Hinamiki of Mibu Takasuke, who served at the imperial court, contains an entry stating that more than 300 nyobo, that is, female attendants, died in the second enclosure. Rather than reducing the death toll to a single definitive figure, distinguishing which record described damage to which places and which people reveals a concrete picture of the disaster. [DXH028]

For Mukaijima Castle, Gien’s diary records that the stone walls sank by more than two ken, about 3.6 meters. Nishiyama interprets this as liquefaction of the ground and argues that the castle on the south bank, which was nearing completion at the time of the earthquake, also suffered damage to its ground. On the other hand, regarding why so many female attendants were in the castle, he suggests the possibility that more people than usual had gathered in preparation for receiving the Ming peace envoys. The damage written in the diaries and scholarly interpretations of its causes need to be read separately. [DXH028]

From preparations to receive the envoys in 1596 to the armed clash of 1600

The development of Shigetsu Castle was also connected with the diplomacy surrounding the invasions of Korea. Peace negotiations proceeded with Ming China, which had aided Korea in its fight against the Japanese army, and preparations were made in Fushimi to receive the Ming envoys. However, the castle collapsed in the 1596 earthquake. The “Letter of Investiture from the Ming Emperor to Toyotomi Hideyoshi” preserved at the Osaka Museum of History is a state letter sent that year by the Ming emperor to Hideyoshi and presented at the audience at Osaka Castle. The stage for receiving the envoys prepared in Fushimi and the place where the state letter was actually handed over need to be traced separately. [R2E012]

“Sakuho” (investiture) refers to a Chinese emperor granting the title of king to the rulers of surrounding countries. This state letter invested Hideyoshi as King of Japan. Only part of the peace terms Hideyoshi had presented was conveyed to the other side, and there was a gap between the peace envisaged by the Ming and the demands of Hideyoshi’s side. Behind the use of gold-leaf roof tiles and palace decoration in building the castle was also the aim of receiving envoys from abroad and displaying authority as a ruler. [R2E012]

Ieyasu’s move in 1599 and the tradition of Hideyoshi’s moon-viewing

Ieyasu’s residence at Mukaijima Castle after Hideyoshi’s death and the stories of Hideyoshi’s moon-viewing need to be separated by period. In 1599 Ieyasu made Mukaijima Castle his residence and then, in the intercalary third month of the old lunar calendar, moved to the Nishinomaru (western enclosure) of Fushimi Castle. This took place in the process of his taking charge of government after Hideyoshi, who died in 1598. The Keicho Nenchu Bokusai-ki by Itasaka Bokusai, Ieyasu’s personal physician, also records how Ieyasu renovated the castle at Mukaijima and moved in. [R3H004, R3H008]

Umehara Kazuhisa, an author who introduced Mukaijima Castle, records in “The Story of Mukaijima Castle,” published in 2008, an anecdote that in 1594 Ieyasu invited Hideyoshi to a moon-viewing banquet at his own residence in Mukaijima, and that Hideyoshi, taken with the moon, established Mukaijima Castle. This is a separate story from Ieyasu’s move there after Hideyoshi’s death. Regarding Hideyoshi and moon-viewing in Fushimi, there is also a story in the Toshiie Yawa in which Hideyoshi and Toshiie exchanged jokes at the Fushimi residence of Maeda Toshiie, the daimyo of Kaga. Ieyasu’s residence in Mukaijima and Toshiie’s residence in Fushimi cannot be treated as the venue of the same banquet. [R3H013, R3H016]

After Hideyoshi’s death, the conflict over who would be master of the castle escalated into armed conflict. In the sixth month of 1600 by the old calendar, Ieyasu set out east from Osaka to attack Uesugi Kagekatsu of Aizu, and on the way he left Torii Mototada and other retainers in charge of Fushimi. Mototada was a warrior who had long served Ieyasu. The Western Army attacked the castle in Ieyasu’s absence; it fell on the first day of the eighth month by the old calendar, and Mototada and others were killed in battle. Afterwards, on the 15th day of the ninth month by the old calendar, the main Battle of Sekigahara took place. The battle for Fushimi Castle was a fight for a base in the Kamigata region that took place before the main battle, and it did not take place at the site where today’s replica keep stands. [R2E013]

Following the sequence of Shigetsu Castle destroyed by the earthquake, the castle on Mt. Kohata rebuilt by Hideyoshi, and the castle on Mt. Kohata burned in the Western Army’s attack reveals changes that cannot be lumped together under the single phrase “the collapse and burning of Fushimi Castle.” What Ieyasu rebuilt was the castle on Mt. Kohata after it had been hit by the fighting. [R2E013]

For Ieyasu, too, Fushimi was an important base for governing

In 1600, the castle on Mt. Kohata burned down in a preliminary battle of the Battle of Sekigahara. Ieyasu then rebuilt it, and in 1603 he was appointed seii taishogun (shogun) at Fushimi Castle. The castle’s history did not end with Hideyoshi’s death; the early Tokugawa government also used Fushimi as a base. [3, 60]

The City of Kyoto’s local history summarizes that Fushimi’s capital-like functions moved to Sunpu, with 1606 as the last year. Even after that, Fushimi Castle remained a castle of the shogun’s family. The second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada, also came to Fushimi accompanied by daimyo and carried out transfers of the domains of western daimyo and negotiations with the imperial court. When considering the daimyo residences of the castle town, not only Hideyoshi’s era but also the layout and changes of occupants in the Tokugawa period are relevant. [60]

The development of land and town that supported the castle’s transformations

A port, embankments and town blocks were also developed to build the castle

Building the castle required bringing in large quantities of materials. According to the City of Kyoto’s general history, Fushimi Port was opened in 1594, and work proceeded on separating the Uji River from Ogura Pond and on building the Taiko Embankment and the Makishima Embankment. Fushimi was located at a point connecting Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Omi, and could make use of both waterways and land routes. [1]

Developing the castle town was not simply a project of putting up buildings on the hill. Soil dug out for the western outer moat was used to fill in low-lying wetlands, and roads, townhouses, temples and shrines, and samurai residences were laid out. Daimyo from across the country built residences in Fushimi, and merchants and artisans gathered along with them. The castle, the waterways and the newly prepared urban area were created as one large urban development. [1]

Otesuji was the road leading to the castle’s main gate (Ote-mon), and Kyomachi-dori and Ryogaemachi-dori were the centers of the townspeople’s residential areas. Names such as Setomono-cho, Shioya-cho and Nayamachi also preserve memories of trade. Today’s three shopping streets are places that have been used along these routes while their facilities and shops changed. The present-day shopping sections can be checked in the guide to Otesuji, Nayamachi and Ryoma-dori. [1, 5, 40, 43]

The sogamae enclosed the castle, the daimyo residences and the townspeople’s quarters together

The moats and earthen ramparts built around the perimeter of a castle town are called sogamae. They were not defenses protecting only the area around the keep, but the outer boundary of a city that included samurai residences and the townspeople’s residential areas. In Fushimi, town blocks were laid out at the western foot of the Momoyama hills, the residences of powerful daimyo were gathered around the castle, the townspeople’s quarters were centered on Kyomachi-dori and Ryogaemachi-dori, and temples and shrines were placed to their west. Between the waterside port and the castle on the hill, places with different roles were arranged. [DXH003]

Lecture materials from the Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute introducing investigations near Momoyama-cho Masamune describe a difference in ground level derived from the sogamae and an earthen rampart whose base is estimated to have been about 18 meters wide. In the surrounding area, road surfaces and side ditches associated with the Date Kaido road, remains of residences, gold-leaf roof tiles, iron objects, bullets and carbonized cooked rice were also found. Not only the tiles that decorated roofs but also items related to travel and meals show that people were active in the castle town. [DXH003]

Kyomachi and Ryogaemachi changed from roads toward the castle into a north–south commercial axis

Fushimi’s town layout changed orientation with the stages of castle building. Matsuo Nobuhiro of the Osaka Museum of History, who has studied the structure of castle towns, argues that in the early period a town area formed around Uoya-cho, Osaka-machi and Aburakake-cho along the road extending west from the Shigetsu residence to the port, and that later, with the construction of the sogamae in 1594, townspeople’s quarters stretching long from north to south were created along Kyomachi-dori and Ryogaemachi-dori. [R2E004]

Towns along roads leading toward the castle are called tatemachi, and towns along roads running across the front of the castle are called yokomachi. This distinction is based on the direction of the road relative to the castle, not on whether north is at the top of the map. In Fushimi, the land routes coming from the Uji and Nara directions converged at the southern end of the castle town, and traffic heading north toward Kyoto ran lengthwise through the town. The layout in which shops and townhouses opened their frontages onto the north–south roads is thought to have responded to that traffic. [R2E004]

On the side of the samurai residences as well, Matsuo infers that when the castle moved from Shigetsu to Mt. Kohata in 1596, the direction of going up to the castle changed from southward to eastward. The change in the castle’s location involved not only rebuilding the keep but also the direction in which residence gates and roads were used. Today’s street patterns overlay designs from multiple stages, and a single pictorial map of the castle town cannot be taken as showing its appearance in all periods. [R2E004]

Fill more than 2 meters deep created level plots for the daimyo residences

On the western slope of Momoyama, the ground on the higher east side was cut away and soil was piled up on the lower west side to secure level surfaces for building residences. Okui Tomoko, who has investigated buried cultural properties in Kyoto City, confirmed fill soil more than 2 meters thick in a 2015 investigation of the presumed site of the Maeda residence. She also re-examined the records of small-scale investigations to the north and showed that deposits of 1.1–2.7 meters can also be considered fill soil. [R2E009]

Stone walls supporting the piled-up soil, ditches marking the boundaries between residences and roads, and spaces for entering through gates made the town on the slope usable. From the positions of ditches and stone walls along the Date Kaido, Okui estimates the road width at the time to have been about 12 meters. This is not a figure obtained by measuring the width of today’s pavement, but a reconstruction combining remains from multiple locations. [R2E009]

The daimyo supplied labor and materials for such construction. A document dated the 18th day of the first month of 1594, introduced by the Ueda City Museum, is a jointly signed letter from the Toyotomi construction magistrates addressed to Sanada Masayuki, Nobuyuki and Yukimura. That construction work was allotted to daimyo across the country can be confirmed not only from the splendor of the completed castle but also from concrete written orders. [R2E011]

Hideyoshi’s embankments changed the flow of the river and the road to Nara

Ogura Pond (Ogura-ike), which spread to the south of Fushimi Castle, was a shallow lake where water from the Uji River and other rivers collected. The surrounding area was prone to flooding in heavy rain, and developing the castle town required both bringing boats into the port and preparing for floods in the lowlands. Hideyoshi built embankments around the pond and diverted the Uji River toward the Fushimi side. The hill where the castle stood and the waterside below it were linked anew through river works. [90][56]

The embankments served not only to hold back water but also as roads for people and goods. The construction of the Taiko Embankment and the Makishima Embankment was also connected with the highway linking Fushimi with Uji and Nara. The Misu Lock Museum’s explanation mentions the Uji, Taiko, Makishima, Kamishima, Shimoshima and Mukaijima embankments, among others. By combining embankments along the river with embankment roads running through the pond, a city was created that could be entered and left by both waterways and land routes. [90][1]

However, Hideyoshi’s works did not put an end to flooding. In addition, the separation of the Uji River from Ogura Pond in this period, the closing-off carried out in the Meiji-era river improvement works, and the land reclamation of the Showa era are not the same works. The positions of the embankments and the connections between the river and the pond continued to be changed afterward. Fushimi’s Water and Flood Control explains these differences in chronological order. [90]

The present Misu Lock is also not a facility built by Hideyoshi. It is a Showa-era facility in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, that enabled boats to travel between the Horikawa canal and the Uji River, which have different water levels. About 330 years after Hideyoshi developed the port and embankments, when the levees were rebuilt to guard against flooding, a passage for boats still had to be kept. That modern solution was the Misu Lock, completed in 1929. [32]

In early Tokugawa Fushimi, coinage, architecture, diplomacy and publishing were carried out

The Fushimi Ginza gathered silver, standardized its fineness and stamped it with hallmarks

In 1601 Ieyasu established a ginza (silver mint) in Fushimi and had Yuasa Sakubei, Daikoku Joze, who had been a silver refiner in Sakai, produce Keicho silver. Silver refiners were craftsmen who refined silver and made it into silver coins. Under Hideyoshi, too, there had been the Joze-za, which gathered silver refiners from Sakai and Kyoto in Osaka, and Ieyasu took up that organization and its techniques and used them for issuing his own currency. The silver mint in Fushimi was not a facility that invented new technology out of nothing. [R2E002]

Keicho chogin had its silver content standardized at 80 percent, and to guarantee its quality the makers stamped it with hallmarks such as an image of Daikoku and the characters for “Joze” and “takara” (treasure). Chogin was a silver currency shaped like a sea cucumber; it was a weighed currency, in which payment was calculated by weighing rather than by counting each piece as a set amount. For small payments, small mameitagin pieces were used. With a fixed fineness and a trustworthy stamp, the burden of closely assessing silver of differing shapes and weights each time could be reduced. [R2E003]

At the time, silver was reckoned in separate units of kan, monme and fun, gold in ryo, bu and shu, and copper coins in kan and mon. The work of exchanging gold, silver and copper coins required the ability to assay each currency and knowledge of exchange rates. Payments across the country were not unified into a single unit in 1601, when the silver mint was established, and in the early period the shogunate’s gold and silver coins alone could not meet demand throughout the country. [R2E002]

In Fushimi, the silver mint’s office (kaisho) and official residences were located across four blocks, and in 1608 they moved to Ryogaemachi-dori between Nijo and Sanjo in Kyoto. The present stone marker for the Fushimi Ginza site was erected in 1970 and moved to its current location about 100 meters to the north in 1980. The single spot where the marker stands cannot be read as the exact site of the workshop at the time, but the marker conveys that the production and inspection of coinage, and the management of that work, were carried out in the town of Fushimi. [R2E001]

Architecture in Fushimi connecting the shogun’s family and the imperial court

The relationship between the early Tokugawa government and Fushimi is not limited to the appointment as shogun. Yoshinao, Yorinobu and Yorifusa, who later founded the three senior Tokugawa branch houses (Gosanke) of Owari, Kii and Mito, were all sons of Ieyasu and were all born in Fushimi. A City of Kyoto history column explains that Yoshinao’s childhood name, Gorota, survives in a town name in Fukakusa Okamedani, and that Yorinobu and Yorifusa left their names through donations of buildings to Gokonomiya Shrine. Fushimi was a place where the shogun stayed, and also a place where his family and the daimyo were involved with buildings and land. [DXH006]

The main hall of Gokonomiya Shrine is a building from 1605. It is a large five-bay shrine building in the nagare-zukuri style, built on the shogunate’s orders by the Kyoto Shoshidai, and it features carvings and vivid polychrome coloring. It is a construction project of the early Tokugawa government that can be seen concretely in Fushimi today. On the other hand, the front gate, said to have been moved from the main gate of Fushimi Castle, is described even in the cultural property explanation as being “traditionally said” to have come from there. Knowing the year in which the main hall was built and the tradition about the former location of the front gate, a separate building, are not the same kind of evidence. [DXH015]

Also a venue for negotiations to restore relations after the invasions of Korea

Hideyoshi sent troops to Korea in 1592 and 1597. These wars, known as the Bunroku and Keicho campaigns, inflicted great harm on the people of Korea, and the return of the people brought to Japan during the war also became an issue in the postwar negotiations. Fushimi Castle was a place involved both in domestic politics, such as developing the castle town, and in war and diplomacy across the sea. [DXH029]

In the third month of 1605, Ieyasu met the Korean monk Songun Daesa Yujeong at Fushimi Castle. Yujeong had come to Japan to ascertain the circumstances on the Japanese side, and he was also involved in repatriating people who had been captured and taken to Japan. Ieyasu expressed his intention to restore diplomatic relations and his cooperation with the repatriation. Negotiations over the terms continued afterward, and in 1607 the kaito-ken-sakkanshi (envoys of reply and repatriation) were dispatched. The name refers to “kaito,” replying to the Japanese side’s state letter, and “sakkan,” returning to their homeland the people who had been brought to Japan. [DXH029]

From this course of events, it cannot be assumed that holding a single meeting in 1605 resolved all the issues of diplomatic relations. Opening negotiations at Fushimi Castle, the formal arrival of the envoys in Japan, and the repatriation of the people who wished to return home each required concrete work and coordination. Alongside the appointment of the shogun and the daimyo residences, the government work of rebuilding relations with other countries was also a task carried out by the castle at Fushimi. [DXH029]

Enkoji and the Fushimi editions turned knowledge needed for government into books

Ieyasu also promoted the publication of books in Fushimi. The books printed with wooden movable type between 1599 and 1606 are called the Fushimi-ban (Fushimi editions). Wooden movable type is a tool in which wooden characters, each carved one by one, are arranged to make up a printing surface. Because the same characters can be rearranged and reused on other pages, the production process differs from the method of carving each page of a book on a single woodblock. [R2E005]

The Zen monk Kanshitsu Genkitsu was involved in this project. Genkitsu studied at the Ashikaga School, later served as its shoshu, the equivalent of its head, and as a close aide to Ieyasu was engaged in the administration of temples and shrines and in drafting diplomatic documents. In 1601, on Ieyasu’s orders, he founded Enkoji Temple in Fushimi with the role of a school, and using the wooden type he had been given, he published works such as the Koshi Kego (The School Sayings of Confucius), the Sanryaku (Three Strategies) and the Jogan Seiyo (Essentials of Government of the Zhenguan Era). Chinese classics for learning about ethics and scholarship, military affairs and the proper conduct of government were chosen. [R2E010]

Enkoji preserves 52,320 pieces of wooden movable type with characters carved in cherry wood, designated as an Important Cultural Property. They include types for the main text, for warichu (small notes inserted within the main text), for katakana, for symbols and so on; most are pieces used to print the Fushimi editions, and they also include pieces carved later as additions. The number of types conveys the scale of the publishing work, but not all the surviving pieces were made at the same time in 1601. [R2E010]

The Shinkan Azuma Kagami of the third month of 1605 is a book in which these results can be seen concretely. It is a 26-volume edition of the Azuma Kagami, which records the deeds of the Kamakura shogunate, published using Ieyasu’s own copy and a copy formerly owned by the Odawara Hojo clan as base texts, and the National Archives of Japan’s exhibition shows a page recording the Fuji hunt of 1193. It was a project that turned a book for reading the precedents of warrior government from manuscript copies available only to their owners into printed matter that multiple readers could use. [R2E006]

Craftsmen who stamped silver coins with marks showing their quality, craftsmen who carved and set the characters of books, and monks and scholars who read and interpreted Chinese classics and old records gathered in the Fushimi of the early Tokugawa government. Government at the castle was supported not only by orders to the daimyo and by ceremonies, but also by the work of producing currency that could circulate and books that could be consulted. [R2E002, R2E006, R2E010]

Confirming changes in the castle and residences from remains in the ground

Excavated stone walls show the difference between the Shigetsu castle and later residences

In 2021, an excavation in front of JR Momoyama Station uncovered the foundation of a stone wall thought to belong to Fushimi Castle at Shigetsu. It was built by digging a trench into the ground, setting the foundation stones (neishi) that support the lowest part of the wall, packing small stones behind them, and tamping down the soil in front. The upper part of the stone wall does not survive, and the method of construction is being studied from the foundation in the ground. [61]

The same investigation also confirmed stone walls dividing later daimyo residences. The two stone walls face different directions, and the residence wall was built in a way that destroyed part of the older foundation. This overlap shows that they were not built at the same time. It is thought that after the earthquake, when the castle moved to Mt. Kohata, land use and the town layout changed on the Shigetsu side as well. [61]

This discovery also suggested that the extent of Shigetsu Castle may have reached farther north than previously estimated. On the other hand, aspects such as the layout of the keep and the gates remain unclear. When drawing the castle grounds on a present-day map, the parts confirmed by excavation and the proposed reconstructions cannot be treated as equally certain. The statement that the remains were excavated in front of the station is also not an indication that they are on permanent public display. [61]

Family-crest roof tiles are another clue for studying daimyo residences

Daimyo residences are studied not only through place names and pictorial maps but also through excavated roof tiles. A 2026 presentation by the Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute features gold-leaf tiles with a plum motif found near the presumed site of the Maeda family residence, tiles with a fan motif from a site said to be the Satake family residence, and gold-leaf tiles with bird and bamboo motifs discovered at Momoyama-cho Masamune. [62]

The bird and bamboo tiles from Momoyama-cho Masamune are thought to be a simplified combination of the Date family’s “sparrows in bamboo” crest. The tile motifs, the places where the tiles were excavated, and the materials recording the layout of the residences are compared with one another to examine which family a building belonged to. The owner of a residence is not determined merely because the kanji of a town name resemble a person’s name. [62]

Gold-leaf tiles were not used only on keeps; they have also been excavated from daimyo residences. Around Fushimi Castle spread a castle town in which each daimyo displayed his family’s emblem even in the decoration of the roofs. [62]

From the Siege of Osaka to abandonment: the changing role of Fushimi Castle

Fushimi Castle in the Winter Campaign of 1614 and the Summer Campaign of 1615

The Siege of Osaka consisted of two campaigns: the Winter Campaign of 1614 and the Summer Campaign of the following year, 1615. In the Winter Campaign, the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada, arrived in Fushimi on the 10th day of the 11th month of 1614 by the old calendar and set out from Fushimi on the 15th of the same month. Ieyasu set out from Kyoto. A jointly signed directive from the shogunate’s senior councilors (toshiyori), dated the 10th day of the 11th month and preserved at the Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives, is a document urging the daimyo Mori Hidenari to deploy his forces. Fushimi was the base the shogun entered before advancing his army, and it was also tied to the political moves ordering daimyo in various regions to mobilize their troops. [R3H003, DXH003]

Even after the Toyotomi clan was destroyed in the Summer Campaign, ceremonies for governing the daimyo were held at Fushimi Castle. On the 7th day of the 7th month of 1615 by the old calendar, at a gathering of the daimyo, the thirteen articles of the Buke Shohatto (Laws for the Military Houses), issued in Hidetada’s name, were read aloud. They were drafted and read out by the Zen monk Ishin Suden, who served Ieyasu. Fushimi Castle had changed its role from a base for setting out to war to a place where the rules to be observed by the postwar warrior houses were presented. [R3H015]

After the castle was abandoned in 1623, the hills and the port town took different paths

When the Toyotomi clan was destroyed in the Siege of Osaka and the castle’s military necessity diminished, the role of Fushimi Castle also changed. The castle was abandoned after the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, received his appointment as shogun there in 1623, the last such occasion, and around that time its buildings and building components were moved to various places. The peach trees planted on the former castle site in the hills are the origin of the place name “Momoyama”. [3, 60]

However, the demand for relaying people and goods between Kyoto and Osaka remained. The port and roads developed for the castle continued to support a town that welcomed boat passengers, merchants and overnight guests. The subsequent rule by magistrates, the trade of the port and the development of Chushojima are explained in detail in Fushimi and Chushojima in the Edo Period. [2]

References

• City of Kyoto: Urban History 20, Fushimi Castle
• Leaflet Kyoto No. 448: Family-Crest Roof Tiles of the Fushimi Castle Town
• Leaflet Kyoto No. 261: Reconstructing Fushimi’s Shigetsu Castle
• Leaflet Kyoto No. 402: The Taiko’s Castle and Its Stone Walls
• City of Kyoto: The Castle Town Founded by Hideyoshi
• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Fushimi Otesuji Shopping Street
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: About Nayamachi Shopping Street
• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Ryoma-dori Shopping Street Promotion Association
• Part 3: Fushimi Castle of the Tokugawa
• City of Kyoto: Tour of Historic Sites and Famous Places for Fushimi Ward Residents
• City of Kyoto: The Prosperity of a Port and Commercial City
• Fushimi Momoyama Goten Goshiro no Ezu (1881 copy, National Diet Library collection)

• Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Fushimi Daijishin Momoyama Goten-zu (1885)

• Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Yodogawa River Office: History of the Misu Lock

• Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Yodogawa River Office: The Story of the Misu Lock

• DXH001 Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education: Fushimi Castle Site, Shigetsu Castle Site and Mukaijima Castle Site
• DXH002 Kyoto City Library: Guide to Materials on Mukaijima Castle (Collaborative Reference Database)
• DXH004 Kyoto City Archaeological Museum: The Keicho Fushimi Earthquake and Fushimi Castle (updated 2026-10-22)
• DXH005 Kyoto Prefecture Buried Cultural Properties Information No. 110: Earthquake Traces
• DXH003 Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute: Materials for the 248th Cultural Properties Lecture
• DXH006 City of Kyoto: Part 3, Fushimi Castle of the Tokugawa
• DXH015 Cultural Heritage Database: Main Hall of Gokonomiya Shrine
• DXH028 Nishiyama Akihito (2011), Damage in the Kyoto Basin from the Fushimi Earthquake of Bunroku 5
• DXH029 Higashi Honganji: Exhibition Catalogue on the Korean Embassies (Chosen Tsushinshi) (2014)
• R2E004: Matsuo Nobuhiro (2015), The Castle Towns of Fushimi and Osaka in the Toyotomi Period
• R2E009: Okui Tomoko (2020), On Civil Engineering Works in the Fushimi Castle Town
• R2E011: Ueda City Museum: Construction of Fushimi Castle
• R2E012: Osaka Museum of History: Letter of Investiture from the Ming Emperor to Toyotomi Hideyoshi
• R2E013: Kyoto Prefecture Tourism Federation: In the Footsteps of Ieyasu, Part 3
• R2E001: City of Kyoto: Site of the Fushimi Ginza, HU041
• R2E002: Kobayashi Nobuto (2017), Fundamental Research on the Monetary History of Early Modern and Modern Japan (Bank of Japan Currency Museum)
• R2E003: Bank of Japan Currency Museum (2010), The Chogin Chosen by Ieyasu
• R2E005: National Archives of Japan: Ieyasu’s Publishing Projects
• R2E006: National Archives of Japan: Shinkan Azuma Kagami

• R2E010: Agency for Cultural Affairs: Fushimi-ban Wooden Movable Type (Important Cultural Property)

• R3H004: Matsuyoshi Yuki, Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute: Materials for the 354th Cultural Properties Lecture

• R3H008: Naito Akira, Ono Koji and Takahashi Hiroyuki (1971), Fushimi Castle (I)
• R3H013: Yuhisai Kodokan: Sagano Bunka Tsushin No. 68, “The Story of Mukaijima Castle” (2008)
• R3H016: Ishikawa Prefectural Library SHOSHO: Maeda Toshiie’s Fushimi Residence (Toshiie Yawa)
• R3H003: Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives: The Arrival of an Age of Peace — 400 Years Since the End of the Siege of Osaka (2015)
• R3H015: National Archives of Japan: Ofuregaki (Kanpo Collection) and the Buke Shohatto