Noda Castle

Overview

Noda Castle (野田城, Noda-jō) was a Sengoku period castle in eastern Mikawa Province, in the area that is now part of the city of Shinshiro in Aichi Prefecture. It was built in 1508, the fifth year of the Eishō era, and it stood for just over eight decades, until 1590. The castle is remembered above all for the Siege of Noda Castle, the event that gives the site its place in the history of the period.

Its position in Mikawa placed it within the territory of the Imagawa clan in the decades when that family controlled the Tōkaidō road westward toward Kyoto. Noda was one of a chain of small fortifications guarding the approaches to Mikawa, and its fate was decided by the larger struggle between the Imagawa and the rising power of Oda Nobunaga.

History

Noda Castle was founded in 1508, during the Muromachi period, the long stretch of Japanese history running from 1336 to 1573 in which the Ashikaga shoguns held nominal authority in Kyoto while real power lay with regional warlords. The castle belonged to that world of provincial strongholds: small, practical, built on a rise and surrounded by earthworks rather than the massive stone bases that later castles would use.

By the 1560s Mikawa was the front line between the Imagawa clan, based in Suruga Province to the east, and Oda Nobunaga, who was consolidating power in Owari Province to the west. In 1560 Imagawa Yoshimoto marched west with a large army and was killed at the Battle of Okehazama by Nobunaga's forces. The defeat shattered Imagawa authority over Mikawa, and the castle at Noda passed into the hands of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was then building his own base in the province.

In 1573 the Imagawa made a final attempt to recover Mikawa. Takeda Shingen, the lord of Kai Province, moved against Ieyasu's holdings, and Noda Castle was besieged. The Siege of Noda Castle ended with the castle's surrender, and the campaign marked the end of Imagawa power in the region. The castle was abandoned in 1590, the year Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to the Kantō region, a move that removed the political reason for maintaining a fortification at Noda.

What Stands There Today

The site of Noda Castle is preserved as a historical marker within the modern city of Shinshiro. Earthworks and the outline of the castle's layout survive in the landscape, and the location is identified by signage for visitors. The castle was a Sengoku period fortification rather than a later stone-built castle, so there is no surviving keep or stone wall to see; what remains is the shape of the ground itself.

The Name in Japanese

The castle's name is written 野田城 and read のだじょう (Noda-jō). In romaji the name is Noda Castle, or Noda-jō with the suffix included.

The name breaks down into three kanji:

• 野 — read の (no) in this word. The character means "field" or "open country," and in place names it often refers to uncultivated or wild land.
• 田 — read だ (da) in this word. The character means "rice paddy," the flooded field where rice is grown. Note that the character is normally read ta on its own; here it takes the voiced sound da because it follows another element in a compound, a common sound change in Japanese place names.
• 城 — read じょう (jō) in this word. The character means "castle." On its own it can also be read shiro, the native Japanese word for a castle; the jō reading is the Sino-Japanese one used when the character appears as a suffix in castle names.

So 野田城 is literally "field-paddy castle," a name taken from the locality rather than from a family or an event. The pattern is extremely common in Japanese castle names: a place name made of two characters, plus 城 as a suffix. Readers who learn to recognise 城 as -jō will be able to identify castle names across the country, from 大阪城 (Ōsaka-jō) to 姫路城 (Himeji-jō).

Visiting and Context

Noda Castle sits within Shinshiro, a city in eastern Aichi Prefecture. The area is associated with the Sengoku period more broadly: Shinshiro is also the location of Nagashino, where the Battle of Nagashino was fought in 1575, three years after the siege at Noda. Travellers interested in the military history of the sixteenth century often combine the two sites.

The castle's lifespan, 1508 to 1590, brackets almost exactly the century of the Sengoku period's greatest intensity, from the collapse of Muromachi authority to the unification campaigns of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Noda was never a great castle, but its history touches the three men who shaped that century: Imagawa Yoshimoto, who lost Mikawa after Okehazama; Takeda Shingen, who took the castle in 1573; and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who held it and whose transfer to the Kantō in 1590 closed its story.