Shiroyama Hachimangū

photo by Bariston · CC BY-SA 4.0

photo by 円周率３パーセント · CC BY-SA 4.0

The grounds are Suemori Castle, from 1547: you can still walk the dry moats.

In 1547 Oda Nobunaga's father moves his residence here, in the middle of a war with the neighbouring clans. The castle does not last long: it passes to his younger son, whom Nobunaga has put to death, and the hill is abandoned. The dry moats, on the other hand, are still there, and the municipality writes that they are well preserved: walking round the shrine grounds means walking the perimeter of the castle.

Shiroyama Hachimangū is in Chikusa Ward, six hundred metres from Nittai-ji, on what was Suemori Castle: in 1547 Oda Nobuhide, Nobunaga's father, moved his residence there during the war against the Imagawa and Matsudaira clans. The shrine only moved there in 1936 and has had this name since 1956. In the castle's second enclosure the Shōwa Jukudō survives, a 1928 building that Aichi Prefecture built as a college for training young people.

ℹ️ The grounds are open 6:30–19:00. None of the pages that can be opened states an admission charge, and the shrine's official site does not respond: opening hours and access to the inner buildings are not published anywhere. The reason to climb up is not the shrine building but the ground beneath it: you can walk round the castle's dry moats and the slope of the hill in about twenty minutes. It is six hundred metres from Nittai-ji, in the same neighbourhood, and you can visit both on the same walk.

🚉 Motoyama · 9 min walk

Sources: city.nagoya.jp · city.nagoya.jp

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