Kumamoto Castle: Building, War and Earthquake

Kumamoto Castle was completed in 1607 by Katō Kiyomasa on a plateau called Chausuyama. In the four centuries since, it has been besieged in a civil war, lost its keep to fire, been rebuilt, and been badly damaged by earthquakes in 2016. Kumamoto City plans to continue its repairs until fiscal 2052.

This article follows the castle through these three moments: its building, the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 and the 2016 earthquakes.

Katō Kiyomasa builds a new castle

Castles stood on and below the Chausuyama plateau before Kiyomasa. According to Kumamoto City, one was built at its eastern end in the Ōnin era (1467), and another at its southwestern foot in 1496.

Kiyomasa came from Owari, in the west of today's Aichi Prefecture. According to the castle's official website, he arrived in Higo Province in 1588 at the age of 27, as lord of the northern half of the province with a domain of 195,000 koku, and moved into the older castle.

According to the official website, the large keep was finished around 1600, the year of the Battle of Sekigahara. In 1607 the new castle was completed, and the characters used to write its name were changed from 隈本 to 熊本.

When it was built, the castle measured about 5.3 kilometers around and covered about 98 hectares. Besides the large and small keeps, it had 49 turrets, 18 turret gates and 29 gates.

Its stone walls, known as musha-gaeshi, rise gently at the bottom and curve more steeply toward the top. The official website says this makes them impossible to climb.

The website also credits Kiyomasa with flood control works and new rice fields, and says people in Kumamoto still call him "Seishoko-san" with affection.

The Hosokawa period

After two generations, the Katō family was removed in 1632, and Hosokawa Tadatoshi, formerly lord of Kokura Castle, became lord of Higo. Kumamoto City gives the domain as 540,000 koku.

In 1640 Tadatoshi invited the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi to Kumamoto and gave him a residence. In 1755 the domain school Jishūkan opened in the castle's second enclosure, the Ninomaru.

The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877

After the domains were abolished in 1871, the castle grounds became army land in 1874, and the headquarters of the Kumamoto garrison moved into the main enclosure, the Honmaru. In 1876 came the Shinpūren uprising against the Meiji government.

In February 1877, the Satsuma Rebellion broke out between the Satsuma army led by Saigō Takamori and the government army. According to the Tabaruzaka Seinan War Museum of Kumamoto City, the garrison decided on February 14 to defend the castle from inside. It replaced wooden turrets with gun batteries and breastworks, dug trenches and laid mines to fit the castle for modern warfare.

On February 19, the keep and the Honmaru palace burned.

According to the official website, about 3,500 garrison soldiers under Tani Tateki held the castle against a Satsuma army of 13,000 in a siege of more than 50 days. The museum counts 52 days.

The Satsuma army attacked from all sides on February 22 and 23 but could not take the castle. The museum explains that the Battle of Tabaruzaka in March was also a struggle between government brigades marching south to relieve the castle and Satsuma troops trying to stop them.

Kumamoto City records that the Battle of Tabaruzaka caused a quarter of all battle deaths in the war, which lasted about seven months. On April 14, the Satsuma army lifted the siege, and a relief brigade entered the castle.

The war spread across Kumamoto, Ōita, Miyazaki and Kagoshima. According to the museum, an estimated 50,000 Satsuma soldiers and about 60,000 government soldiers were mobilized, and about 14,000 people on both sides are said to have died.

Rebuilding the keep

The castle was damaged by an earthquake in 1889. In 1933, the Uto turret and twelve other buildings were designated National Treasures, and the stone walls and moats became a Historic Site.

The buildings were reclassified as Important Cultural Properties in 1950, and the site became a Special Historic Site in 1955. Today thirteen buildings, including the Uto turret, are Important Cultural Properties.

In 1960, the large and small keeps were rebuilt in steel-framed reinforced concrete, partly with donations from citizens. According to the official website, the exterior was reproduced faithfully from photographs taken in the early Meiji period, down to the number of roof tiles.

A restoration program began in 1998. For the castle's 400th anniversary, the great hall of the Honmaru palace was reconstructed and completed in 2008, based on Edo-period plans and documents, early Meiji photographs and excavated finds.

The 2016 earthquakes

At 9:26 p.m. on April 14, 2016, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the Kumamoto region. At 1:25 a.m. on April 16, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake followed. Both reached the highest intensity, 7, in the town of Mashiki.

Kumamoto Prefecture says it was the first time on record that two intensity-7 earthquakes struck the same area within 28 hours. In its preliminary figures as of April 11, 2025, the prefecture counts 275 deaths, of which 50 were caused directly by the earthquakes and 225 were disaster-related deaths.

At the castle, two of the thirteen Important Cultural Property buildings collapsed and three partly collapsed. Five of the twenty rebuilt or reconstructed buildings collapsed. Stone walls were damaged over about 29.9 percent of their total area.

Restoration

Kumamoto City gave the keep priority as a symbol of recovery. In January 2021, the long wall (nagabei) became the first Important Cultural Property building to be restored, and in March 2021 the keep was fully restored.

Since April 26, 2021, the keep has offered new exhibits on its history from construction through the fire of 1877, the 1960 rebuilding and the 2016 earthquakes.

The Uto turret, the only multi-story turret surviving from the castle's beginning, has been dismantled for repair since 2022, with completion planned for 2032. The city's plan aims to finish all Important Cultural Property buildings and the main areas by fiscal 2042, and to continue other work until fiscal 2052.

Places to visit

Kumamoto Castle* (Kumamoto City). Since 2019, a special opening has let visitors see the damage and the repair work, and a special viewing walkway was completed in 2020. The keep's floors present the Katō and Hosokawa periods, the modern period including the Satsuma Rebellion, and the 2016 earthquakes, with a viewing floor at the top.

Another earthquake struck Kumamoto on July 28, 2026. As of September 18, 2026, the official website listed the castle as open as usual, with some nearby facilities closed. Please check the official website for the latest access and hours.

Tabaruzaka Seinan War Museum* (Kumamoto City). Opened in 2015 at Tabaruzaka, it presents the Satsuma Rebellion and the national historic site of the war's battlefields, including material on the Hakuaisha, the predecessor of the Japanese Red Cross Society. Please check the official website for opening hours.