Kochi · MarunouchiNo.878★★★Open in map →
Kochi Castle
The castle on the low hill in the middle of Kochi still has its original wooden keep, and, uniquely in Japan, the lord's palace and the rest of the honmaru enclosure standing around it.
- FromKochi Station
- ~15 minTosaden bus, ~10 min
- Get off atKochijo-mae (Tosaden Kotsu bus and tram)
- On foot
- Kochi Castle
Where it is
18 more notes in Kochi · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Otemon Gatethe Edo-period main gate in its stone enclosure, with the keep showing above it from the forecourt
- The sannomaru wallslong runs of rough-fitted stonework along the climb toward the upper enclosures
- Tsumemonthe gate-tower between the second and main enclosures; the way through is the upstairs corridor, not the ground floor
- Kaitokukan, the lord's palacethe honmaru reception rooms, the part no other Japanese castle still has
- The keep18.5 metres tall with six floors inside, entered directly from the palace
How to actually get there
- Kochi Station → Kochijo-mae (Tosaden Kotsu bus, about 10 min).
- Kochijo-mae → Otemon gate (about 5 min on foot).
- Climb through the sannomaru and ninomaru terraces and enter the honmaru through the Tsumemon gate-tower.
- Walk the palace rooms, then step straight into the keep and up to the top floor.
- Tosaden Kotsu bus from Kochi Station
- Kochi Station to Kochijo-mae takes about 10 minutes by Tosaden Kotsu bus, and the Otemon gate is roughly five minutes on foot from the stop. The station is also within walking distance across the city grid if you would rather see the streets on the way.
- Return from Kochijo-mae
- Buses and trams both call at Kochijo-mae and run into the evening, so the way back is easy: the castle closes in the late afternoon, well before the last service. Harimayabashi, the city's transfer point, is a few minutes east if you are carrying on elsewhere.
About the place
The castle occupies a low hill in the middle of Kochi, ringed now by the prefectural offices and the city grid. Fifteen of its buildings survive from the Edo period and are designated Important Cultural Properties: the keep, the palace, the main gate, gate-towers and stretches of wall. Elsewhere in Japan the keep came through and everything around it burned or was cleared away; here the honmaru enclosure survived whole. The result is a castle that reads as a working compound rather than a single tower on a hill.
How to enjoy it
The keep and the palace open at 9:00, with last entry at 16:30, and the first hour is the calmest of the day. Going in at opening also means you reach the top floor before the upper stairs, steep and ladder-like, fill with people coming down. Allow about an hour and a half for the climb, the palace and the keep together.
Background & history
Yamauchi Kazutoyo, given Tosa province by Tokugawa Ieyasu after the battle of Sekigahara, began building here in 1601, and the castle was finished in 1611. A fire in 1727 destroyed most of it, and the domain rebuilt through the middle of the Edo period, following the old form closely. Nothing since has taken that work down, neither war nor the Meiji clearances, so what stands on the hill is the eighteenth-century rebuild itself.
Before you go
- Cash
- Admission to the keep and the palace is 500 yen for visitors aged 18 and over, and free below that age. The car park on the site is charged by the hour. The ticket office takes cards as well as cash.
- Before you go
- The castle closes for a few days around the New Year. Inside the keep the upper stairs are steep and ladder-like, and there is no step-free route: the climb from the gate to the honmaru is stone steps and slopes the whole way.
- Another way
- From Harimayabashi in the centre, the Tosaden Kotsu tram runs west to the Kochijo-mae stop, which leaves the same short walk to the gate. Driving, there is paid parking on the site itself.
- After you get off
- From Kochijo-mae the Otemon gate is about five minutes on foot, straight toward the hill. From the gate the keep is a climb of stone steps and terraces rather than a level walk.