Imabari Castle, Japanese castle in Imabari, Japan
Imabari Castle is a Japanese castle in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, facing the Seto Inland Sea. Its white-plastered keep, rebuilt in reinforced concrete in 1980, has five stories and six floors and stands on a stone base. The grounds retain Edo-period stone walls and a seawater moat, and the keep houses exhibitions and a natural science museum.
Tōdō Takatora began building Imabari Castle in 1602 and completed it in 1604, replacing Kokufu Castle on Mount Karako as the domain's seat. In 1609 he was transferred to Tsu Domain and the keep was reportedly moved to Kameyama Castle in Tanba. The Hisamatsu-Matsudaira clan held the castle from 1635 until 1869, when it was abandoned and most buildings were demolished.
The castle is also called Fukiage Castle. Its moats are filled with seawater, and boats could once enter directly from the sea to a walled anchorage in the second enclosure. The reconstructed keep holds exhibitions of weapons, armour and documents, and the Okane and Yamazato turrets house the antiquities and local art museums.
The top floor of the tower offers views across the coastline and toward the Shimanami Kaido Bridge. The grounds sit within a public park and can be reached on foot from the city center.
The keep standing today is a 1980 reinforced-concrete reconstruction, not the original: no trace of a tenshu foundation has ever been found on the site. The 1604 structure may have been dismantled and moved to Kameyama Castle in Tanba around 1610, so it stood for at most about six years. Its design borrowed from Kameyama's appearance, yet adds gables and projections that castle never had.
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