Odawara Castle

Overview

Odawara Castle (小田原城, Odawara-jō) is a Japanese castle in the city of Odawara, in Kanagawa Prefecture, south-west of Tokyo. The first fortifications on the site date to 1418, in the Muromachi period (1336–1573), making it one of the older castle sites in the Kantō region. For roughly a century it was the seat of the Later Hōjō, one of the most powerful warrior houses of the Sengoku period, and it was the object of the Siege of Odawara. The keep standing today is a twentieth-century reconstruction, built in reinforced concrete in 1960 on the stone foundation of the original donjon. In 2006 the Japan Castle Foundation included it among the 100 Fine Castles of Japan (日本100名城, Nihon hyaku-meijō), a list of castles selected for historical and cultural importance.

History

The castle's origin is dated to 1418, the twenty-fifth year of the Ōei era (応永, Ōei), when a fortification was established at the site. It sits in Odawara, a coastal city that controlled the Tōkaidō, the main road linking the capital region with western Japan, which gave whoever held the castle command of a critical route.

In the sixteenth century Odawara became the headquarters of the Later Hōjō. Hōjō Ujitsuna and Hōjō Ujiyasu both died at the castle, and Ujiyasu and his son Hōjō Ujinao were both born there. Under Ujiyasu the fortifications were expanded into an extensive castle town, and the place acquired a reputation as one of the most difficult positions in Japan to take by assault.

That reputation was tested in the Siege of Odawara. The castle was attacked by the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the fall of the Later Hōjō at Odawara ended their rule and cleared the way for the unification of Japan under Hideyoshi. After the Hōjō were defeated, the castle passed to new lords. In the Edo period it became the seat of the Odawara Domain (小田原藩, Odawara-han), the feudal territory administered from the castle.

The castle suffered damage and demolition in the Meiji period. The donjon was torn down between 1870 and 1872, as castles across Japan were dismantled following the end of the shogunate and the abolition of the feudal domains. The stone foundation was left in place.

What Stands There Today

The present donjon is a reconstruction. It was built in 1960 out of reinforced concrete, erected on the surviving stone base of the original keep. Because it is a modern concrete structure rather than a surviving wooden castle, it belongs to the category of reconstructed castles rather than original ones — a distinction that matters to visitors comparing it with castles such as Himeji or Matsumoto, whose main keeps survived the Meiji demolitions.

The castle site is now Odawara Castle Park (小田原城址公園, Odawara-jōshi kōen), a public park in Odawara. Among the structures within the park is Sumiyoshi Bridge (住吉橋, Sumiyoshi-bashi). The park is the setting for the castle as it is experienced today, and the reconstructed keep is its central feature.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 小田原城. It is read in kana as おだわらじょう, and in romaji as Odawara-jō.

Breaking it down character by character:

• 小 — read here as o. It means "small" or "little". On its own the character is usually read chii-sai or shō, but in place names it frequently appears as o.
• 田 — read here as da. It means "rice field" or "paddy". Its common standalone reading is ta, and it appears in thousands of Japanese place names, reflecting the agricultural landscape the names originally described.
• 原 — read here as wara. It means "plain", "field", or "open moorland". Its common reading is hara, and it typically refers to flat, uncultivated ground. Note that the three characters together — 小田原 — are read Odawara as a unit, and the individual readings shift to fit the compound. This kind of sound change is normal in Japanese place names.
• 城 — read here as jō. It means "castle". This is the standard character for a Japanese castle, and it appears in the name of every castle in the country: 姫路城 (Himeji-jō), 松本城 (Matsumoto-jō), and so on. When jō follows another word, it is often voiced in compounds, but here it stands as jō.

So 小田原城 is literally "the castle of Odawara" — the place name plus the word for castle. This pattern, [place name] + 城, is how nearly all Japanese castles are named, which makes 城 one of the most useful characters a learner of Japanese history can memorise early.

Visiting and Context

Odawara is on the Tōkaidō line and the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, roughly an hour from Tokyo, which makes the castle an easy day trip from the capital and a natural stop for anyone travelling between Tokyo and Kyoto or Osaka. The castle sits within Odawara Castle Park in the city of Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, at coordinates 35.2508333, 139.1536111.

For readers of Japanese, the castle is a useful case study in how the language handles historical place names. The name combines a three-character place name whose readings cannot be predicted from the characters alone with the single most common castle character, 城. Learning to read 小田原城 means learning both a specific place name and a general pattern that applies to castles across the country.

The castle's association with the Later Hōjō also makes it a reference point for the Sengoku period, the era of near-constant warfare that preceded the unification of Japan. Hōjō Ujiyasu, Hōjō Ujitsuna and Hōjō Ujinao are all tied to the site, and the Siege of Odawara is one of the events that marks the transition from that period of division to a unified realm.