It's not known exactly when this castle was constucted, but by the time of the later Suwa it was a subordinate castle to Uehara Castle. After Suwa Yorishige fell back to Kuwabara Castle from Uehara Castle, he was still surrounded by the Takeda forces and gave up two days later. Yorishige and his two brothers were taken back to Kofu where they were forced to commit suicide (seppuku) later that month. Kuwabara Castle is even smaller and less defensible that Uehara Castle, so some wonder why he would have fallen back to this point. One theory is that his forces were already too small to hold Uehara Castle so they tried to make a last stand here. It is also said that Suwa Yorishige originally did not believe Takeda would attack him so he did not prepare until it was too late.
Visit this castle together with Uehara Castle for two good examples of mountaintop castles.
|English Name||Kuwabara Castle|
|Alternate Names||Takatoya-jo, Suisho-jo|
|Castle Condition||Ruins only|
|Designations||Prefectural Historic Site|
|Historical Period||Pre Edo Period|
|Access||Kamisuwa Sta (Chuo Line), 15 min taxi|
|Location||Suwa, Nagano Prefecture|
|Coordinates||36° 1' 33", 138° 8' 25"|
|Visits||November 17, 2007|
|Added to Jcastle||2007|