Obi castle town — Otemon

photo by z tanuki · CC BY 3.0

photo by z tanuki · CC BY 3.0

Castle town of the Itō clan for 280 years: since 1977 the first protected district in Kyushu.

Obi was the seat of the Itō clan's domain for about 280 years, from 1588, with a revenue of 51,000 koku of rice. The district has kept walls of local stone (飫肥石) and Obi cedar (飫肥杉), and the samurai houses along the streets that branch off from the Otemon, the entrance gate rebuilt in 1978 with four trunks of centuries-old cedar. In 1977 Obi was the first district in the whole of Kyushu to be selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings (重要伝統的建造物群保存地区), the highest level for a Japanese historic centre: hence the nickname ‘little Kyoto of Kyushu’.

The town lies in the municipality of Nichinan, inland, a short distance from the Nichinan coast. Besides the Otemon, the complex includes the Yoshōkan residence, the former domain school Shintokudō, the Matsuo-no-Maru Garden, the castle's history museum and the museum dedicated to the diplomat Komura Jutarō, who was born in Obi and was a leading figure in Japanese diplomacy in the early twentieth century. The merchants' street (商人町通り) still keeps the shops that served the castle town. The castle itself, on the hill behind the Otemon, survives today as an archaeological site inside the park.

ℹ️ The Otemon and the streets of the district are public, with free admission, and always accessible. The individual paid buildings inside the area (Yoshōkan, history museum, Komura museum) each have their own opening hours and ticket, not verified here: a combined ticket covers several sites together according to the unofficial tourist sources consulted, not confirmed on the official page read. Free tourist car park, 150 spaces.

🚉 飫肥待合所 · 6 min walk

Sources: kanko-miyazaki.jp · kankou-nichinan.jp

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