Matsumoto Castle

About this place

Matsumoto Castle stands in the city of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, about 173 km west of Tokyo in a straight line and a short walk from Matsumoto Station. It is one of twelve castles in Japan whose keep survives from before the modern era, and the keep is a National Treasure. The keep was completed in the late 16th century and still has its original wooden interior. A fort first stood here in the early 16th century as Fukashi Castle, and it took the name Matsumoto in the 1580s. When the Meiji government ordered old castles torn down in 1872, the local campaigner Ichikawa Ryozo and the townspeople raised money to save the keep. Built in the age of firearms, it has thick walls with square openings for guns and narrow slits for bows, and a museum of historic guns has been inside since 1988. Its black-lacquered wooden walls and dark roofs have earned it the nickname «Crow Castle». The keep rises over a wide moat; on calm days the whole building and its red bridge are mirrored in the water, and on clear days the snowy peaks of the Northern Alps stand behind it. Visitors climb steep wooden stairs, some close to ladders, through six floors inside the keep, including a moon-viewing turret. Queues can be long in cherry blossom season and on holidays, so it pays to arrive early.