Suemori Castle

Overview

Suemori Castle (末森城, Suemori-jō) was a Japanese castle in what is now Nagoya, in Aichi Prefecture. It was built in 1548, during the Muromachi period (1336–1573), in the seventeenth year of the Tenbun era (天文). At the time of its construction the site lay outside the city of Nagoya, in the countryside of Owari Province.

The castle is tied to the Oda family, the warrior house that would soon dominate central Japan. It was built by Oda Nobuhide (1508–1549), and the following year it passed to his third son, Oda Nobuyuki. Suemori is remembered above all for its connection to the violent split within the Oda family, and to the Battle of Inō.

History

Oda Nobuhide built Suemori Castle in 1548. Nobuhide was a leading warlord of Owari Province and the father of Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582), the figure who would later unify much of Japan. Suemori was one of several strongholds the Oda maintained across the province.

Nobuhide died in 1549. In that same year, his third son, Oda Nobuyuki, became lord of Suemori Castle. Nobuyuki's position placed him in direct rivalry with his elder brother Nobunaga, who had inherited leadership of the family.

That rivalry came to blows at the Battle of Inō. Nobuyuki fought against Nobunaga there and was defeated. He died in 1557. The castle is thought to have been abandoned in 1559, after which it fell into ruins.

What Stands There Today

Nothing of the castle survives as a standing structure. A stone stele marks the site of the former castle, and the grounds are today overgrown with trees. Also located on the premises is the Shiroyama Hachiman-gū, a Shinto shrine.

The site lies in the neighbourhood of Shiroyama-chō in Nagoya. The nearest public transport is Motoyama Station, served by the Higashiyama Line and the Meijo Line of the Nagoya subway.

The Name in Japanese

The castle's name is written 末森城. It is read in kana as すえもりじょう, and in romaji as Suemori-jō.

Breaking the name down character by character:

• 末 — read here as sue. The character means "end", "tip", or "last". It is a common element in Japanese place names.
• 森 — read here as mori. The character means "forest" or "woods". Combined with the first character, 末森 gives the place name Suemori.
• 城 — read here as jō. The character means "castle". When it follows a place name, it identifies a fortified site, as in Suemori-jō, "Suemori Castle".

A note on the reading of 城: on its own the character is read shiro, meaning "castle". In compound names such as this one it usually shifts to the Sino-Japanese reading jō, which is why the castle is called Suemori-jō rather than Suemori-shiro. The same character appears in the name of the neighbourhood, Shiroyama-chō, where it is read shiro as part of the element 城山, "castle mountain". Learners will meet 城 constantly in Japanese place names and historical writing, and the shiro / jō split is worth committing to memory early.

The element 森, "forest", is one of the most frequent components in Japanese surnames and place names, and it appears here in its everyday reading mori. The first character, 末, carries the sense of "end" or "last", and it too recurs widely in names.

Visiting and Context

Suemori Castle belongs to the Sengoku period, the era of near-constant warfare that ran through the late Muromachi years and into the Azuchi–Momoyama period. Castles of this kind were built by regional warlords to hold territory and to serve as bases in the struggles between rival houses. Suemori's story is a compact illustration of how those struggles often ran inside a single family: two sons of Oda Nobuhide, Nobunaga and Nobuyuki, took up arms against each other, and the castle changed hands and was lost within roughly a decade of its founding.

For visitors, the site is a quiet one. There is no reconstructed keep or museum complex, only the stele, the wooded ground, and the Shiroyama Hachiman-gū shrine on the premises. The location is reached from Motoyama Station on the Higashiyama and Meijo subway lines, which places it within easy reach of central Nagoya.

The site sits in Shiroyama-chō, a name that preserves the memory of the castle: 城山, shiroyama, means "castle mountain". Place names of this type are one of the most reliable ways to trace where fortifications once stood in Japan, even when no stonework remains above ground.