Iga Ueno Castle and the Ninja Museum
licensed photographAsturio Cantabrio / CC BY-SA 4.0

Mie · IgaNo.1198★★Open in map →

Iga Ueno Castle and the Ninja Museum

historyOff the trail — and worth it

A hilltop park in the middle of Iga that holds two things at once: a museum of ninja craft inside a trick farmhouse, and a white castle keep standing on bare stone above the moat.

  1. FromOsaka-Namba Station
  2. ~2 hr 30 minKintetsu, then a branch line
  3. Get off atUeno-shi Station (Iga Railway Iga Line)
  4. On foot
  5. Iga Ueno Castle and the Ninja Museum
Directions ↗

The sweet spot

This is a well-known stop rather than a secret one; visitors come for the ninja from both Osaka and Nagoya all year. What gets skipped is the castle. The museum sits near the park entrance and the keep is further in, so people who budget half a day for the ninja house often turn back before the walk out to the stone wall.

Where it is

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What to look for — in walking order

Iga-ryu Ninja Museum entranceHide-sp / CC BY-SA 3.0
  1. The ninja housea rural landowner's house moved here from the Iga countryside, with revolving wall panels and hidden doors
  2. The ninja archive and the hands-on halltools, documents and a throwing-star range that is ticketed apart from the museum itself
  3. Haiseidenan octagonal wooden hall shaped after the poet Basho in travelling dress, with the roof as his hat
  4. The castle keepa wooden great keep and small keep, the top floor coffered with forty-six squares of calligraphy and painting
  5. The high stone wallthe west face of the main enclosure, dropping in one line to the water of the inner moat

How to actually get there

  1. Osaka-Namba → Iga-Kambe (Kintetsu, changing at Osaka-Uehommachi).
  2. Iga-Kambe → Ueno-shi Station (Iga Railway Iga Line).
  3. Ueno-shi Station → Ueno Park (about ten minutes on foot, uphill).
  4. Ninja museum → Haiseiden → the castle keep and the high stone wall.
Osaka-Namba to Ueno-shi, changing at Iga-Kambe
From Osaka-Namba ride Kintetsu to Osaka-Uehommachi and stay on the Kintetsu Osaka Line as far as Iga-Kambe, then change to the Iga Railway's Iga Line for Ueno-shi Station. Allow around two and a half hours end to end, less if you take a Kintetsu limited express for the long leg. The branch line keeps its own timetable, so check the connection before you leave.
Back from Ueno-shi Station
Ueno-shi is the one staffed station on the Iga Line and it sells Kintetsu tickets as well, so buy the whole return leg there rather than at the junction. Services on the branch are not frequent. Read the departure board when you arrive in the morning and choose your train back before you walk into the park.
Directions from my location (Google Maps) ↗

About the place

Ueno Park sits on the plateau at the centre of Iga, a basin town set between Osaka and Nagoya. Two very different places share it. On the north side, the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum is built around a farmhouse moved here from the Iga countryside and fitted with revolving wall panels and hidden doors. A few minutes to the west, the castle keep rises white above a stone wall standing about thirty metres over the inner moat — a height the castle's own guide puts level with Osaka Castle, the tallest in the country. The same park holds the Haiseiden hall and a museum for the poet Basho, who was born in this town.

How to enjoy it

The castle opens at nine and the museum at ten, so an early arrival is best spent on the wall and the keep before crossing to the ninja house. The demonstration runs to its own schedule and on a separate ticket, so ask for the day's times when you buy museum admission. Both close in the late afternoon, well before the park empties.

Background & history

Tsutsui Sadatsugu raised the first castle on this plateau. In 1611 Todo Takatora — a lord known across Japan for building them — pushed the main enclosure west and threw up the great stone wall, preparing for the war he expected against Osaka. The keep he began was never completed, and the domain held the site as a provincial castle without one. What crowns the plateau today went up in 1935, built in wood at the private expense of Kawasaki Koku, a member of parliament from this town, who named it the Iga Culture and Industry Castle.

Before you go

Cash
The museum and the castle are run by different organisations and charge separately. The castle's climbing fee was 600 yen for adults and 300 yen for primary and junior-high pupils when checked, and it takes cash only apart from contracted travel-agency vouchers. At the museum the ninja demonstration is priced apart from admission, and the throwing-star range is charged on its own.
Before you go
The museum closes over the New Year and the castle over the last days of December. Individual treasures go off view when they are lent out, and the castle announces those spells on its own site. The park between the two is open ground with no cover, so rain sends the whole visit indoors.
Another way
From the Nagoya side, take the JR Kansai Main Line via Kameyama to Iga-Ueno Station and change there to the Iga Line for Ueno-shi. Services on that JR stretch are sparse, so read the timetable before committing to it.
After you get off
From Ueno-shi Station walk about ten minutes northwest and uphill into Ueno Park. The museum entrance is signposted from the park road, and the castle stands a few minutes further west across the open ground.