Ota Castle (Kishu)

Ōta Castle stood in Ōta, Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, and was a medieval lowland castle. It is said to have been built by Ki no Toshitsura, the sixty-fourth Kuni no Miyatsuko of Kii, during the Entoku era (some sources say the Bunmei era), and thereafter served as the stronghold of the local Ōta clan and the Ōta league, in a region shaped by the Ikkō-ikki movement. During the Sengoku period, the castle maintained a complex political position amid regional power struggles. In 1585 (Tensho 13), as part of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's systematic campaign against Ikko-ikki forces following his attacks on Negoro-ji and Saiga Castle, Ota Castle came under siege. Hideyoshi's army — put at sixty thousand by some accounts and a hundred thousand by others — raised an embankment roughly six kilometres long and three to five metres high around the castle in six days and flooded it. Between three and five thousand defenders, the remnants of the Ōta and Negoro leagues, held out for about a month. The castle finally surrendered, and fifty-three men led by the castellan Ōta Sakon took their own lives in exchange for the lives of the garrison. The castle was burned at its fall and appears to have been abandoned then. Wakayama Castle, begun by Toyotomi Hidenaga immediately after the fall of Negoro-ji, was built on a separate site (Mount Torafusu) and did not reuse the Ōta Castle grounds.