Tahara Castle

Tahara Castle (田原城) is a Japanese castle located in Tahara, southern Aichi Prefecture, Japan. At the end of the Edo period, Tahara Castle was home to the Miyake clan, daimyō of the 12,000 koku Tahara Domain.

History
In 1480, Toda Munemitsu (1439–1508), virtually independent warlord of the Atsumi Peninsula during the Sengoku Period, erected the predecessor of Tahara Castle on a site facing Mikawa Bay. Threatened by the growing power of the Matsudaira clan to the north, the Toda pledged loyalty to the Imagawa clan, but later came under the rule of the Tokugawa clan. Following the Battle of Odawara in 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi assigned the Kantō region to Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Toda were dispossessed of their holdings, which were given to Hideyoshi's vassal, Igi Tadatsugu, who rebuilt the moats and stonework.

Following the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, Toda Katatsugu was raised back from hatamoto status to a 10,000 koku daimyō, and allowed to return to Tahara Castle, which was now the center of the newly created Tahara feudal domain in 1601. In 1664, his son Toda Tadamasa was transferred to Amakusa Domain in Bungo Province with an increase in revenues to 21,000 koku and Tahara Domain was reassigned to the Miyake clan, who remained in residence until the Meiji Restoration.

Little remains of the original castle aside from portions of the moats and stonework, as all castle buildings were destroyed in 1872 in accordance with the new Meiji government. Within the central keep of the former castle is a Shinto shrine to the ancestors of the Miyake clan, and another dedicated to the famed local scholar Watanabe Kazan, as well as the local Tahara City Museum. When the Tahara City Museum was reconstructed in 1990, a faux yagura and gate were reconstructed.