The moat is real seawater: a shark was spotted there in 2015, a 1.8 m ray in 2016.
Built in 1604 by Tōdō Takatora, the ‘master of castle building’ and lord of 203,000 koku in half of Iyo, it is one of Japan's ‘three great water castles’, along with Takamatsu and Nakatsu: the inner moat, 50–70 metres wide, holds real seawater, linked to the port of Imabari by a channel of about 100 metres with tidal exchange. In May 2015 a small shark was spotted there, and in September 2016 a ray of about 1.8 metres: ‘unexpected guests’ that had come in from the sea by mistake, according to the castle's management.
The castle originally had three moats connected to the Seto Inland Sea and an inner harbour for mooring warships, a rare case of a coastal castle on flat ground. The original five-storey tenshu was demolished in 1871; the present reconstruction of the tenshu and turrets dates from 1980. Selected by the Japan Castle Association as one of the ‘100 famous castles of Japan’ in 2006.
ℹ️ March–November 9:00–17:00, December–February 9:00–16:30, closed 29–31 December. Admission: adults 520 yen, students 260, free for under-18s, 420 for over-65s. About 2 km (22 minutes' walk) from Imabari Station. An average visit takes about an hour and ten minutes.
🚉 Imabari · 21 min walk
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