10/11/2021
How To Bring Down a Samurai Castle
Samurai castles were brought down via force, or by siege leading to starvation and thirst, through treachery, or even through diplomatic, peaceful terms. Trickery and treachery seem to play the biggest roles.
Battering rams are often depicted in movies and TV as being used to smash down the castle gates. This may have been the case in European warfare, but there are no documented cases of Japanese castles ever having been brought down or breached through the use of such devices. That is pure fiction. For starters, any samurai carrying a battering ram and approaching the heavily defended castle gates would be the initial target of the defenders within.
In the case of Washizu and Narumi castles falling to the invading Imagawa forces prior to the Battle of Okehazama, it was sheer numbers of attackers, versus the smaller size of the fortress-like castle and smaller number of defenders that caused their quick downfall.
Although many castles were claimed to be impregnable, none were ever proven to be so. Gifu Castle was claimed to be infallible, however it fell a number of times, one of the most interesting being the time that Takenaka Hanbei took the castle with just himself and 16 samurai followers. Gifu castle also fell to Oda Nobunaga some time later, and yet again just prior to the Battle Of Sekigahara, when Oda Hidenobu was attacked by the tandem forces of Ikeda Terumasa and Fukushima Masanori. In this case, it was force that brought the castle down.
Ao Castle fell when Sassa Narimasa’s retainer was persuaded by the enemy to open the gates, as Okazaki almost fell to the same reason. Fushimi Castle was breached when one of the defenders burned a watchtower as his family had been captured by the enemy.
When force or treachery could not bring a castle down, there were other ways. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, on the advice of Kuroda Kanbei laid siege to Takamatsu Castle flooding the plain on which it was built. Following heavy rains, the surrounding rivers were diverted, and the plain began to flood. Built on a small rise within the low-lying plain, meant that the army inside Takamatsu were soon cut off. As food supplies and moral lessened, the castellan capitulated.
Prior to the Battle of Sekigahara, with the Western army entrenched in Ogaki, and the eastern forces surrounding them, but not quite laying siege, Tokugawa Ieyasu himself suggested at one point that the rivers be dammed, and the castle flooded. Instead, he sent word via spies that his plans were to about turn, head back to the small pass between the mountains known as Sekigahara, and having entered Omi (modern day Shiga Prefecture) attack Sawayama Castle, Ishida Mitsunari’s personal home fief. This was enough to rouse Ishida Mitsunari into action, and on the night of October 20th, 1600, and under the cover of darkness and heavy rain, his forces pulled out of Ogaki Castle, and this led to the Battle of Sekigahara.
