--- title: "Matsumoto Castle: the black keep below the Japan Alps" description: "Matsumoto Castle in Nagano has a National Treasure keep of five linked buildings. Who built it, why its walls are black, and how the town saved it." url: https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/matsumoto-castle language: en published: 2026-11-11 category: "Places in Japan › Nagano" tags: ["Nagano"] author: "Oginoya Editorial Team" publisher: "Oginoya Co., Ltd." translations: zh-TW: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-tw/articles/matsumoto-castle ko: https://kama-meshi.com/ko/articles/matsumoto-castle zh-CN: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-cn/articles/matsumoto-castle zh-HK: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-hk/articles/matsumoto-castle th: https://kama-meshi.com/th/articles/matsumoto-castle de: https://kama-meshi.com/de/articles/matsumoto-castle fr: https://kama-meshi.com/fr/articles/matsumoto-castle es: https://kama-meshi.com/es/articles/matsumoto-castle --- # Matsumoto Castle: the black keep below the Japan Alps ![A castle keep with black walls and tiered gray roofs on a stone base beside a wide moat, a red-railed turret at its right corner and snow-covered mountains in the distance](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/matsumoto-castle-moat-alps-2020.seYstiEp_Z25VoVR.webp) Matsumoto Castle stands on flat ground in the city of Matsumoto, in central Nagano Prefecture, and its keep is one of twelve castle keeps in Japan that survive from the Edo period (1603–1868) or earlier. The keep is a group of five linked buildings walled in black-lacquered boards and white plaster. All five are a National Treasure, and the city of Matsumoto describes the main keep as the oldest surviving keep in Japan with five roofs and six floors. ## From Fukashi Castle to Matsumoto Castle The castle began as Fukashi Castle, said to have been built in 1504 by Shimadate Sadanaga, a kinsman of the Ogasawara family, the governors of Shinano Province. In 1582 Ogasawara Sadayoshi retook the castle for his family and changed the name of Fukashi to Matsumoto. In 1590 Toyotomi Hideyoshi made Ishikawa Kazumasa lord of Matsumoto. Kazumasa, a senior retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, had gone over to Hideyoshi in 1585. He started work on the castle and its town but soon died, and his son Yasunaga built the keep. Matsumoto is said to have been one of the castles, along with Takashima Castle at [Suwa](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/suwa), where Hideyoshi placed his own lords to watch Ieyasu in Edo, today's Tokyo. No record fixes the year the keep was built. The city's official view, adopted from a panel it convened in 1989, is that the main keep, the Inui small keep and the turret joining them were built in 1593 and 1594. Other theories put the completion in 1595, 1597 or 1600–1601, and one dates the main keep to 1615. ## Five buildings from two eras The main keep has six floors inside and shows five roofs outside, because its third floor sits under the second roof. It is 29.4 meters high and weighs about 1,000 tons. A two-story turret, the *watari-yagura*, joins the main keep to the Inui small keep on its north side. The Inui small keep has three roofs and four floors. ![A tall castle keep and a smaller keep joined by a low wing, all with black boards below white plaster, on a stone base rising from a moat](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/matsumoto-castle-keeps-west-2010.B8_ZKXPv_Z1q3Ejz.webp "The main keep, right, and the Inui small keep, left, joined by the watari-yagura, August 2010.") These three buildings were made for fighting with guns. They have 115 loopholes for matchlocks and arrows, and 11 *ishi-otoshi*, hatches in overhanging parts of the first floor for shooting at anyone climbing the stone base. The walls of the first and second floors are about 29 centimeters thick, which a matchlock ball cannot pierce, and the inner moat is about 60 meters wide, the limit of a matchlock's accurate range. The steepest staircase in the main keep, from the fourth floor to the fifth, rises at 61 degrees. ![A steep, narrow wooden staircase with handrails seen from below, with arrows marked on its lower steps and a person standing at the top](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/matsumoto-castle-stairs-2017.DJ10xKTY_ZkQWVO.webp "A staircase inside the keep, March 2017.") The other two buildings came about 40 years later, in peacetime, and have almost no defenses. Matsudaira Naomasa, a grandson of Ieyasu and lord of Matsumoto from 1633 to 1638, added the Tatsumi-tsuke-yagura and the Tsukimi-yagura, the moon-viewing turret, at the southeast corner of the main keep. Naomasa is said to have rushed into the work in 1633 because the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu wished to visit [Zenkōji](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/zenkoji) on his way back from Kyoto in 1634 and lodge at Matsumoto Castle. Iemitsu never came. The moon-viewing turret has only posts and thin, removable board doors on its north, east and south sides, and a veranda with a vermilion-lacquered railing runs around those three sides. ![A turret with wooden board doors and a red-railed veranda, built against a taller black-and-white castle building above a stone wall, with a pine tree beside it](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/matsumoto-castle-tsukimi-yagura-2025.QiubCvAL_Z1GL409.webp "The moon-viewing turret, November 2025.") ## Why the keep is black The lower two-thirds or so of the keep's walls is covered with *shitami-ita*, overlapping boards coated in black lacquer, and the upper part is white plaster. A wall plastered all the way down was likely to crumble in the rain that the roofs could not keep off, so boards were fitted to shed the water. The lacquer is recoated every year. ## A castle on soft, flat ground Matsumoto Castle is a *hirajiro*, a castle built on a plain, 590 meters above sea level on the floor of a basin. Three rings of water-filled moats surrounded it. The keep stands on the soft outer edge of an alluvial fan made by the Metoba and Susuki rivers. Sixteen hemlock logs about 39 centimeters across and about 5 meters long were buried inside the stone base to take the weight of the keep, and more logs were laid like a raft in the bed of the moat to keep the stone wall from sinking. ## Five castles with National Treasure keeps Five castles in Japan have keeps that are National Treasures: Matsumoto, Inuyama, Hikone, Himeji and Matsue. The five buildings at Matsumoto were designated on April 20, 1936, under the prewar law, and again on March 29, 1952, under the present law, when Matsumoto followed Himeji as the second castle designated. ## Sold, saved and straightened In 1871 the Matsumoto domain was abolished and the keep passed to the Ministry of Military Affairs. In 1872 it was auctioned off for a little over 235 ryō, to be demolished. Ichikawa Ryōzō, a deputy headman of one neighborhood in the castle town, petitioned the prefecture to postpone the demolition and lend him the keep for an exposition. Five expositions were held in the keep between November 1873 and 1876, and a newspaper reported no fewer than 4,000 to 5,000 visitors a day at the first exposition. With the proceeds and donations, Ichikawa bought the keep back. ![A black-and-white photograph of a castle keep leaning to one side above a moat, with tiles missing from its roofs](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/matsumoto-castle-leaning-meiji.FE798Zpk_wdhCx.webp "The keep in the Meiji era, before the repairs that began in 1903.") After 1876 the keep was neglected. Tiles and plaster fell, the logs inside the stone base rotted, and the keep began to lean. Kobayashi Unari, principal of the Matsumoto Middle School in the castle's second enclosure, founded a preservation society with the mayor and raised money. Repairs ran from 1903 to 1913 and corrected the lean, and donations paid about 80 percent of the cost. From 1950 to 1955 the national government took the entire keep apart and repaired it. The foundation was rebuilt in reinforced concrete, and the alterations made in the repair of 1903–1913 were removed to return the keep to its Edo-period form. Of 84,672 roof tiles, 22,396 old tiles were used again. ## The town below the Alps West of the city rise the Hida Mountains, the Northern Alps, and Matsumoto is the gateway for climbers bound for Mount Yari and Mount Hotaka. The former Kaichi School, built in 1876 by a local master carpenter who imitated Western architecture with Japanese techniques, became a National Treasure in 2019, the first modern school building to be designated. The Koshihikari rice in [Tōge no Kamameshi](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-kamameshi), Oginoya's ekiben in a clay pot, [comes mainly from Azumino](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/japanese-rice-varieties), the rice-growing country that shares the Matsumoto Basin with the city. ## References - [Matsumoto Castle official website (City of Matsumoto), "The keep and its structure"](https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/about/tower) - [Matsumoto Castle official website, "History of Matsumoto Castle"](https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/about/history) - [Matsumoto Castle official website, "When the keep was built"](https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/value/construction) - [Matsumoto Castle official website, "National Treasure designation and repairs"](https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/value/national-treasure) - [Matsumoto Castle official website, "The castle its townspeople saved"](https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/value/citizens) - [City of Matsumoto, "Matsumoto Castle keep" (cultural properties)](https://www.city.matsumoto.nagano.jp/soshiki/134/3771.html) - [City of Matsumoto, "Main opinions and requests received in fiscal 2024"](https://www.city.matsumoto.nagano.jp/site/yokosomayorsoffice/140619.html) - [City of Matsumoto, "The former Kaichi School building becomes a National Treasure"](https://www.city.matsumoto.nagano.jp/soshiki/140/4457.html) - [Agency for Cultural Affairs, Database of National Cultural Properties, "Matsumoto Castle keep"](https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/920) - [Kotobank, "Matsumoto Castle"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%9D%BE%E6%9C%AC%E5%9F%8E-136766) - [Kotobank, "Matsumoto (city)"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%9D%BE%E6%9C%AC%E5%B8%82-136759) - [Kotobank, "Azumino (city)"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%AE%89%E6%9B%87%E9%87%8E%E5%B8%82-177760) - [Kotobank, "Kaichi School"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%96%8B%E6%99%BA%E5%AD%A6%E6%A0%A1-171265) Image credits (resized for display): - [tsuruta yosuke / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E6%9D%BE%E6%9C%AC%E5%9F%8E_-_Matsumoto_Castle_-_Flickr_-_tsuruta_yosuke.jpg), [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), 2020 - [663highland / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matsumoto_Castle06bs4592.jpg), [CC BY 2.5](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5), 2010 - [senngokujidai4434 / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E6%9D%BE%E6%9C%AC%E5%9F%8E_%E9%9A%8E%E6%AE%B5_%E7%9F%A2%E5%8D%B0_(33419801351).jpg), [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), 2017 - [lumoplank / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matsumoto_Castle_-_Matsumoto6546.jpg), [CC0](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) - [Unknown / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matsumoto_Castle_Old_Photograph.jpg), Public domain