--- title: "Komoro and Ueda: two castle towns beyond the Usui Pass" description: "Komoro and Ueda are castle towns on the Chikuma River in eastern Nagano: a castle built below its own town, and the Sanada castle that held off two Tokugawa armies." url: https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/komoro-ueda language: en published: 2026-11-11 category: "Places in Japan › Nagano" tags: ["Nagano", "RailwayHistory"] author: "Oginoya Editorial Team" publisher: "Oginoya Co., Ltd." translations: zh-TW: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-tw/articles/komoro-ueda ko: https://kama-meshi.com/ko/articles/komoro-ueda zh-CN: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-cn/articles/komoro-ueda zh-HK: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-hk/articles/komoro-ueda th: https://kama-meshi.com/th/articles/komoro-ueda de: https://kama-meshi.com/de/articles/komoro-ueda fr: https://kama-meshi.com/fr/articles/komoro-ueda es: https://kama-meshi.com/es/articles/komoro-ueda --- # Komoro and Ueda: two castle towns beyond the Usui Pass ![A two-story castle gate of dark wood and white plaster under a tiled roof, set between stone walls, with a wooden plaque reading 懐古園 above the gateway](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/komoro-castle-sannomon-2017.BQNQHrhd_fmI9x.webp) Komoro and Ueda are two castle towns on the Chikuma River in eastern Nagano Prefecture. Both were post stations on the Hokkoku Kaidō, the highway that branched from [the Nakasendō](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/nakasendo-usui) at Oiwake, in today's town of [Karuizawa](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/karuizawa-history), and ran to the Sea of Japan. Komoro Castle was built lower than the town it ruled, and Ueda Castle, begun by Sanada Masayuki in 1583, twice held off armies of the Tokugawa. ## The road to the Sea of Japan The Hokkoku Kaidō ran from Oiwake through Komoro, Ueda, [Nagano](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/zenkoji) and Takada to Naoetsu, on the Sea of Japan. Gold from Sado Island was carried along it to Edo, today's Tokyo, and the shogunate regarded the Hokkoku Kaidō as next in importance after the five main highways. Ueda's post station was set up in 1603 in Unno-machi and Hara-machi, merchant quarters that Sanada Masayuki had settled with people from the villages of Unno and Hara. ![A two-story wooden building with latticed windows and a tiled gable roof, facing a street](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/komoro-honjin-toiyaba-2007.DN2tr2Cu_xmqqv.webp "The former honjin of Komoro, the lodging for lords and officials on the Hokkoku Kaidō and an Important Cultural Property, September 2007.") ## Komoro: a castle below its town The old town of Komoro lies on the southwestern slope of Mount Asama, 700 to 800 meters above sea level. The castle stands at the lowest, western edge of the town, on a cliff above the Chikuma River. Komoro Castle is called an *anajiro*, a "hole castle," and is said to be the only castle in Japan that lies below its castle town. The castle makes use of the ravines in the slope. Its enclosures stand on the high ground, and the paths that join the enclosures run along the floors of the ravines. Sengoku Hidehisa, lord of Komoro from 1590, built the stone-walled castle, a three-story keep and the castle town. Lightning burned the keep in 1626, and its base of uncut stones remains. The Sengoku family was moved to Ueda in 1622, and the Makino family ruled Komoro for ten generations from 1702. ## Two gates and a park In 1872 the government auctioned off the land and buildings of Komoro Castle. Most of the buildings were dismantled or moved, but the Ōtemon and the Sannomon stayed where they stood. Both gates were designated Important Cultural Properties on December 9, 1993. The Ōtemon, the main gate, was built in 1612, in Sengoku Hidehisa's time. Tiled gates were rare then, and the Ōtemon is said to have been called the Kawara-mon, the tile gate. ![A large two-story gate with thick wooden posts, white plaster walls and a tiled roof, with a pine tree in front of it](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/komoro-castle-otemon-2017.CRNYg4gg_Z1xbYdp.webp "The Ōtemon of Komoro Castle, August 2017.") The Sannomon, the third gate, was swept away by a flood in 1742 and is thought to have been rebuilt around 1765. The railway now runs between the Sannomon and the Ōtemon. In 1880 former retainers of the Komoro domain built a shrine, Kaiko Jinja, on the site of the palace in the main enclosure, and the grounds around the shrine came to be called Kaikoen. The plaque over the Sannomon reads "Kaikoen" in the hand of Tokugawa Iesato, the sixteenth head of the main Tokugawa house. ## A poet by the old castle The poet Shimazaki Tōson (1872–1943) came to Komoro in April 1899 to teach at the Komoro Gijuku, a private school opened in 1893. Tōson's poem "Chikuma-gawa ryojō no uta," a traveler's song of the Chikuma River, begins "Komoro naru kojō no hotori," "by the old castle at Komoro," and the poem made the castle ruins known throughout Japan. In Komoro, Tōson turned toward prose and wrote *Chikuma-gawa no suketchi* (Sketches of the Chikuma River). A stone inscribed with the poem stands in Kaikoen on the cliff above the river. ## Ueda: the castle that stopped the Tokugawa twice Ueda lies downstream from Komoro, in the middle of the Ueda Basin. Sanada Masayuki moved his seat there from Sanada, now part of the north of the city, and began the castle in 1583 on a terrace above the Chikuma River. Below the cliff ran a slow, deep branch of the river called Amagafuchi, which served as a moat. In 1585 a Tokugawa army attacked Ueda Castle, after Masayuki had refused Tokugawa Ieyasu's order to hand over the Numata territory. Fewer than 2,000 Sanada men drove off more than 7,000. In 1600, before the battle of Sekigahara, Ieyasu's son Hidetada marched along the Nakasendō and entered Komoro Castle. Masayuki and his second son Nobushige, also known as Yukimura, held Ueda Castle against Hidetada's 38,000 men, and Hidetada did not reach Sekigahara in time for the battle. In 1601 Masayuki and Nobushige were exiled to Kudoyama, and the Tokugawa demolished Ueda Castle. Masayuki's eldest son Nobuyuki, who had sided with the Tokugawa, received Ueda and was moved to Matsushiro in 1622. ## Three turrets out of seven Sengoku Tadamasa came from Komoro to Ueda in 1622 and began rebuilding the castle in 1626. He died in 1628, and the work ended unfinished. The main enclosure had seven corner turrets and two turret gates. Three corner turrets stand today, all three from the Sengoku family's time. ![Castle turrets with dark board walls on stone bases at the top of a cliff faced with stone walls, seen from a lawn below](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/ueda-castle-amagafuchi-2014.ByByWjwq_ZzTuYx.webp "Turrets of Ueda Castle above Amagafuchi, February 2014. A flood in 1631 changed the ground at Amagafuchi, and the water dried up.") In 1874 Ueda Castle was sold into private hands, and by about 1877 every turret except the west turret had been dismantled or sold. A preservation society formed in 1942 bought back two turrets that had been sold to a restaurant in Tokyo, and in 1949 the two turrets were rebuilt on the castle site as the south turret and the north turret. The gate between the south and north turrets was rebuilt in 1994. ## Silk towns The production of silkworm eggs, silk reeling and the weaving of a silk cloth called Ueda tsumugi flourished in Ueda from the Edo period (1603–1868), and after 1868 Ueda became one of Nagano Prefecture's leading towns for raising silkworms and reeling silk. The Ueda Sericulture College, founded in 1910 as Japan's first institution of higher education in sericulture and silk, became the Faculty of Textile Science and Technology of Shinshu University in 1949. Komoro was one of the prefecture's leading silk-reeling places from the Taishō era (1912–1926) into the first years of the Shōwa era. The towns around [Lake Suwa](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/suwa) were silk-reeling towns as well. ## The railway over the pass The railway from Naoetsu opened as far as Karuizawa in December 1888, and Komoro Station opened that year. In April 1893 [the rack railway over the Usui Pass](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/yokokawa-usui) joined Karuizawa to Yokokawa and completed the line between Takasaki and Naoetsu. Until October 1997 every train over the pass stopped at Yokokawa, where [Oginoya](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/oginoya-history) had been in business since 1885 and put [Tōge no Kamameshi](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-kamameshi), its ekiben in a clay pot, on sale on February 1, 1958. On October 1, 1997, [the Shinkansen from Takasaki to Nagano](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/hokuriku-shinkansen) opened, with a station at Ueda. The 65.1 kilometers of the old main line from Karuizawa through Komoro and Ueda to Shinonoi passed that day to the Shinano Railway, a company with its head office in Ueda. The Shinkansen station for the Komoro district, Sakudaira, was built in the neighboring city of Saku. In Saku, Oginoya had opened [a drive-in](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/drive-in-culture) on July 20, 1994, in front of the Saku interchange of the Jōshin-etsu Expressway. ## References - [Kotobank, "Komoro"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%B0%8F%E8%AB%B8-504919) - [Kotobank, "Komoro Castle"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%B0%8F%E8%AB%B8%E5%9F%8E-179950) - [Kotobank, "Kaikoen"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%87%90%E5%8F%A4%E5%9C%92-457247) - [Kotobank, "Ueda"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E4%B8%8A%E7%94%B0-438638) - [Kotobank, "Ueda Castle"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E4%B8%8A%E7%94%B0%E5%9F%8E-179733) - [Kotobank, "Hokkoku Kaidō"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%8C%97%E5%9B%BD%E8%A1%97%E9%81%93-133493) - [Kotobank, "Shimazaki Tōson"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%B3%B6%E5%B4%8E%E8%97%A4%E6%9D%91-18449) - [Kotobank, "Shin-etsu Main Line"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E4%BF%A1%E8%B6%8A%E6%9C%AC%E7%B7%9A-81337) - [Kotobank, "Shinano Railway"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%81%97%E3%81%AA%E3%81%AE%E9%89%84%E9%81%93-1332436) - [Kotobank, "Tokugawa Hidetada"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%BE%B3%E5%B7%9D%E7%A7%80%E5%BF%A0-19099) - [Komoro Tourism Bureau, "History of Komoro Castle"](https://www.komoro-tour.jp/spot/castle/history/) - [Komoro Tourism Bureau, "From Komoro Castle to Kaikoen"](https://www.komoro-tour.jp/spot/castle/castle-park/) - [City of Komoro, "Komoro Castle Sannomon"](https://www.city.komoro.lg.jp/soshikikarasagasu/kyoikuiinkaijimukyoku/bunkazai_shogaigakushuka/2/1/1/bunkazai/kunisitei/706.html) - [City of Komoro, "Komoro Castle Ōtemon"](https://www.city.komoro.lg.jp/citypromotion/places/6087.html) - [City of Ueda, "History of Ueda Castle"](https://www.city.ueda.nagano.jp/site/uedajo/123940.html) - [Ueda City Multimedia Information Center, "Ueda Castle highlights"](https://museum.umic.jp/uedajo/about/index.html) - [Shinshu University Faculty of Textile Science and Technology, "History"](https://www.shinshu-u.ac.jp/faculty/textiles/guidance/history.html) - [Oginoya, chronology](https://www.oginoya.co.jp/tougenokamameshi/history/) Image credits (resized for display): - [Asturio Cantabrio / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Komoro_Castle_San-no-mon_ac.jpg), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), 2017 - [663highland / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_komoro-honjin-toiyaba01s3200.jpg), [CC BY 2.5](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5), 2007 - [さかおり / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Komoro_Castle%27s_Otemon_Front_side.jpg), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), 2017 - [Qurren / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ueda_Castle_Amagafuchi.jpg), [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), 2014