A letter from 1620: the 5-storey tower was taken down on purpose so as not to alarm the Tokugawa.
A 1620 letter by Hosokawa Tadaoki reports that Kuroda Nagamasa told the shogunate (the Tokugawa government) he had dismantled the tenshu (天守, the main tower): the castle almost certainly had a five-storey tower, deliberately taken down so as not to alarm the Tokugawa, and not ‘perhaps never built’, as the widespread legend has it. In February 2025, after two years of work and 400 million yen, the Shiomi-yagura turret reopened.
The castle was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century by the daimyō (feudal lord) Kuroda Nagamasa. Today the area, called Maizuru Park, keeps its walls, moats and a few turrets, but not the tenshu (main tower), which was never rebuilt. It is on the list of the 100 Famous Castles of Japan (日本100名城).
ℹ️ The park is always open. The reconstructed Shiomi-yagura turret is open 10:00–16:00, closed on Mondays. The cherry trees blossom in spring; the azaleas bloom at the end of April.
🚉 Ōhorikōen · 10 min walk
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