天守 (tenshu) is the Japanese word for a castle tower. There are only 12 original tenshu left in Japan. I visited them all over a couple of years and made some simple videos. You can find a map of the 12 and a little more information on this page.
The island of Shikoku has four of the remaining tenshu tucked away in various corners. I imagine that its distance from the capital and the mainland afforded these castles a little bit of protection during the deconstruction of many of the others on the mainland during the Meiji period.
Uwajima castle is a hirayama castle – a hilltop castle on a plain – although it’s a bit hard to see on the approach to the park it sits in these days.
There’s been fortifications here since 941, apparently. The current castle dates back to 1596, when Todo Takatora, was put in charge by Toyotomi. (It had previously been known as Marukushi castle.) Todo would later be transferred to Imabari castle, and he would also switch sides at the battle of Sekigahara. Maybe he didn’t like Imabari as much, or maybe he just wanted to be on the winning team.
One of the many changes after Sekigahara was one of the ownership of Uwajima, one I didn’t know about until I entered the castle and saw a replica of the armour belonging one of my favourite samurai, Date Masamune, ensconced on the first floor of the castle:
Masamune’s son, Hidemune, moved all the way down from Sendai to Shikoku to take over stewardship of this little fortress on a hill. The Date clan would go on to pretty the place up a bit, do a great deal of development for the local area and look after the castle for the next few centuries.
The castle is well worth the trip, although Uwajima’s not the most accessible of cities – coming from Kochi, you’d be better off taking a bus. The train route is … circuituous … and takes much longer than it needs to. Coming from Matsuyama way isn’t so tricky, but you’ve got that good old countryside train schedule happening, so, you know, plan accordingly.
While the castle is great but not particularly unusual, Uwajima’s unique in plenty of other ways. Most of all, they do love their cows down here.
There’s an annual festival with giant cow demons parading down the street that takes place in July, called, appropriately enough, “Ushioni Matsuri / The Cow Demon Festival”.
It’s also the only Japanese town (as far as I know) that has a bullfighting tradition, although it’s not the man versus beast version that Hemingway was hot for. Instead, it’s a bovine battle, more akin to sumo: two bulls scrap it out in a ring. The first bull that runs away – or whose knees touch the ground – is the loser.
All in all, Uwajima is somewhere on my ‘go back to one day’ list – there’s a lot of unusual tourist attractions hidden away in the town to make it worth a longer trip. (I didn’t even mention the fertility shrine…)
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