Shishiudo Castle

History

Shishiudo Castle is a mountaintop redoubt (tsume-no-shiro) of the Kobatake clan. If you see the photo at the end of the set looking out from the point above Shishiudo Yakata it is easy to see why this was such a great position for not only the castle but for a lookout to watch over the valley in it's entirety. Please refer to the Shishiudo Yakata page for more details of the history. Since it is a bit far from the yakata and not so easy to quickly escape to, it is also thought that it may have just been an early mountaintop castle of the Kobatake, not necessarily considered a "tsume-no-shiro".

Visit Notes

It takes some imagination and a good map to see the castle in your mind, but the satellite radar image below shows it best. The mountaintop castle itself is very simple. It is mostly one main bailey along the ridge line with a couple smaller baileys and trenches on each end and a wide bailey along one side. The south side is particularly steep and has a wall of bedrock and boulders protecting it. The side bailey (obi kuruwa) is along the north side adding some extra protection on the mildly weaker side.

There are very few castles that I am not keen to visit again, but the is probably one of them. There are no trails nor signs to this castle nor at the castle. There are no signs that people had even travelled the paths to get to the castle recently, not to mention the fact it's only briefly mentioned in a few sources. Based on sparse information from a couple other stalwart castle travellers (see links to Jokaku Horoki and Yamajiro Sanka - who also had been putting this one off for some time as being chellenging), a good map, and some good shoes and a trekking pole I set out to find this mountaintop fortification. On paper it looks easier than it is!

My first attempt took me to what ended up being a dead end, or at least the wrong direction. I think I misread the map. My second attempt got me very close but the last stretch seemed too difficult/risky to scale. My third attempt went farther up the valley where I followed a kind of ridge to the top slowly levering myself with the trekking pole and grabbing/pulling trees and branches to get up the side. This landed me a bit west of the castle along the top ridge of the mountain and I just followed it back to the castle itself. On the return trip, I kind of lost the way and probably didn't follow the same route back far enough. I more or less ended up slip sliding down a kind of gully or water channel back to the bottom. It was dry since there had not been rain for some time and was not so bad. Maybe I could remember enough to do it right if I ever go back but I'm not too anxious to make the climb for such few remnants again.

There is a lot of mislabeling of Shishiudo Castle and Shishiudo Yakata depending on whether people are aware of the mountaintop castle or not. Especially with the Another Kyoto tourism campaign that calls the lower castle Shishiudo Castle but does not mention the mountaintop castle and their description of an "untouched mountain castle" clearly refers to this mountaintop castle, not the yakata. The Kyoto Castle survey clearly splits these two and calls the lower castle as Shishiudo Yakata (or Kobatake Kyokan) and the mountain Castle as Shishiudo Castle. I follow this official survey for most things relating to Kyoto castles. If you've ended up on this page looking for the photos of the Shishiudo Castle that was introduced at the Osaka Castle Festival or through the Another Kyoto/Woodland Kyoto tourism campaigns, please see Shishiudo Yakata.

Loading map...

Gallery

Shishiudo Castle Map (c) Kyoto Pref.
(1) is Shishiudo Yakata, (2) is Koide Yakata and (3) is Shishiudo Castle

Castle Profile
English Name	Shishiudo Castle
Japanese Name	宍人城
Founder	Kobatake clan
Year Founded	1400s
Castle Type	Mountaintop
Castle Condition	Ruins only
Historical Period	Pre Edo Period
Features	trenches
Visitor Information
Access	JR Sonobe Station, 17 mins bus to Shishiudo, 90 mins (?) walk
Visitor Information	Mountaintop, no trails
Time Required	30 mins for the castle
Location	Nantan, Kyoto
Coordinates	35° 4' 57.32" N, 135° 25' 58.19" E
Loading map... {"type":"TERRAIN","minzoom":false,"maxzoom":false,"types":["ROADMAP","SATELLITE","HYBRID","TERRAIN"],"mappingservice":"googlemaps","width":"auto","height":"200px","centre":false,"title":"","label":"","icon":"Castlemarker.png","lines":[],"polygons":[],"circles":[],"rectangles":[],"copycoords":false,"static":false,"visitedicon":"","wmsoverlay":false,"zoom":6,"layers":[],"controls":[""],"zoomstyle":"DEFAULT","typestyle":"DEFAULT","autoinfowindows":false,"resizable":false,"kmlrezoom":false,"poi":true,"cluster":false,"clustergridsize":60,"clustermaxzoom":20,"clusterzoomonclick":true,"clusteraveragecenter":true,"clusterminsize":2,"imageoverlays":[],"kml":[],"gkml":[],"searchmarkers":"","fullscreen":false,"scrollwheelzoom":false,"locations":[{"text":"","title":"","link":"","lat":35.082588888889,"lon":135.43283055556,"icon":"../images/1/1e/Castlemarker.png"}]}
Admin
Added to Jcastle	2024
Contributor	Eric
Admin Year Visited	2023
Admin Visits	November 23, 2023
Friends of JCastle
Jokaku Horoki
Yamajiro Sanka

1.00

(one vote)

Enable comment auto-refresher