Naegi Castle Ruins (Rock-Foundation Mountain Castle)

The predecessor of Naegi Castle was established in the Daiei era (1521–1528), when Tooyama Ichiunnyūdō Masatoshi relocated the clan's base from Uenaegi to the summit of Shiroyama (Takamoriyama, 432 m) (Gifu Prefecture official, Naegi Castle ruins). After the castle fell to Mori Nagayoshi in 1583, Tooyama Tomoyuki recovered the former domain after Sekigahara (1600) and established a cadet branch — the Naegi Tooyama clan — that governed the Naegi domain of 10,000 koku for 12 successive generations and 270 years through the entire Edo period (Nakatsugawa City official, Naegi Castle ruins). The castle buildings were dismantled in Meiji 4 (1871); the stone walls survive. The castle's main precinct covers approximately 20,000 m², and the total area including outer walls reaches approximately 350,000 m²; a zone of 156,774 m² was designated a National Historic Site in April 1981.

The Naegi domain's haibutsu-kishaku (destruction of Buddhism) is evaluated as 'thorough to a degree unmatched anywhere in Japan' (Nakatsugawa City Naegi Tooyama History Museum). In the late Edo period, Hirata Atsutane's school of National Learning (Hirata-ha Kokugaku) had become dominant within the domain. Aoyama Kagetsu (a senior disciple of Hirata Atsutane) and his son Aoyama Naomichi (who assumed the post of daisan-ji, or senior administrator, at the age of 24) led the campaign (Wikipedia, 'Naegi Domain haibutsu-kishaku'). On 3 September Meiji 3 (1870), Aoyama Naomichi summoned the abbots of all temples in the domain and declared: 'In accordance with the Restoration of Imperial Rule, all temples within this domain are hereby ordered abolished; respond promptly.' An emergency decree of 27 August had already ordered that 'halls, pagodas, stone buddhas, wooden images and the like shall be removed and burned or buried.' The campaign extended to erasing posthumous Buddhist names from gravestones, destroying memorial tablets (ihai) in private homes, and forcibly converting all households to Shinto funeral rites. Only Gōshū Sōtai, abbot of the domain lord's ancestral temple Unrinji, refused to secularise; he received the accumulated memorial tablets and implements of the Tooyama line — said to fill 'a hundred horse-loads' — and relocated to the temple of Hōkaiji in an overlapping shogunate territory beyond the domain's reach. The chronicler Sakagami Sōsen of the adjacent Owari-domain village of Tsukimura recorded that beholding the desolation of Naegi was 'like seeing all the temples of Japan abolished at once' (Higashishirakawa Village office, 'Haibutsu-kishaku and Popular Response').

The Nakatsugawa City Naegi Tooyama History Museum (TEL: 0573-66-8181) provides guided tours of the ruins and mounts exhibitions on the haibutsu-kishaku (museum resource introduction). The site is a stamp location for the 'Sequel: 100 Famous Castles of Japan' programme (Japan Castle Foundation). The Nakatsugawa City Tourism Association promotes the castle as 'Rank 1 in the panoramic mountain-castle category,' highlighting the 360° vista of Mt Ena, the Kiso River, and the town from the viewing platform (Nakatsugawa Tourism Association official).

Sea-of-clouds conditions in early morning (November through March) are the most dramatic. The autumn colour season (late October through mid-November) is also spectacular. Morning mist in summer creates an atmospheric alternative.

The composition from the castle keep platform (a suspended-floor viewing platform) overlooking the Kiso River, Mt Ena, and the town is the defining image. Close-up photography of the foundation holes cut directly into the granite bedrock is rewarding in the stone-wall zone. The most dramatic light for sea-of-clouds shots is the first one to two hours after sunrise.

The castle-keep platform (suspended-floor structure) provides dramatic high-altitude views — do not venture beyond the fall-prevention barriers. The stone walls and bedrock surfaces become slippery in rain; crampons are advisable in winter when ice forms. As a mountain castle at 432 m, the round trip from the entrance to the keep platform takes 20–30 minutes on foot and requires moderate physical fitness.