Koujin'yama Castle (Ina)

History

Kōjin’yamajō was a jinba (encampment) used by local Ina forces doing battle with the invading Takeda forces around 1544. The Takeda would ultimately be victorious.

Satellite fortifications included Higuchiuchi Castle (Ina) and Shinmachiharada Yakata.

Visit Notes

The site of Kōjin’yamajō is located in Kōjin’yama Park, Tatsuno Municipality, Upper Ina District. The park has many attractions including the Tatsuno Park Hotel - built Europeanesque, the Tatsuno Sea – actually a lake or reservoir, an art gallery, a bug museum, Kōjinsha (a shrine), and a Meiji period hillside kiln which is designated as cultural property. Of castle ruins, however, none remain. First I went to the shrine and was able to gain the ridge from the back of the hotel. There were a couple of flat areas but nothing I could confirm to be a bailey space – though I did find several mushrooms. I then descended from this forested mount into the well-groomed park area. From here one can appreciate ‘the Sea of Tatsuno’, a small, quaintly named lake, and views of Tatsuno Park Hotel. Yogo-sensei says that the place where the hotel is would be a large enough space for mustering many troops, but how does he know much of the mountain here wasn’t flattened by modern people when the hotel was built? Some castle bloggers also make reference to the Tatsuno Sea as being used as a water source or even a natural moat for the castle, but this body of water looked to me like a modern reservoir (I’m not a civil engineer but I should think this is clear even looking at a typographical map - anyway, I checked and it was indeed built in 1969; we poor castle explorers sometimes let our imaginations get the better of us). After checking out the old kiln, the oldest thing remaining in the park, I then went to the Tatsuno Art Gallery which is housed in a sort of neo-classical parody of Japanese architecture (a total boondoggle!), but few of the displays excited me, and the entire first floor is a dedicated to telling a story about dinosaurs, which might’ve appealed to me twenty years ago but not so much now.

Gallery

castle mount

Castle Profile
English Name	Koujin'yama Castle (Ina)
Japanese Name	伊那荒神山城
Alternate Names	Kōjin’yama-jinba
Founder	伊那衆
Year Founded	c. 1544
Castle Type	Mountaintop
Castle Condition	Ruins only
Historical Period	Pre Edo Period
Features
Visitor Information
Access	Ina-Shinmachi Station on the Iida Line; 20 minute walk.
Visitor Information	24/7 free; park
Time Required	30 minutes
Location	Tatsuno, Nagano Prefecture
Coordinates	35° 57' 54.61" N, 137° 59' 27.67" E
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Admin
Added to Jcastle	2022
Contributor	ART
Admin Year Visited	Viewer Contributed
Friends of JCastle
Jōkaku Hōrōki
Yogo

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