Map: GSI Japan Odawara Castle was the Later Hōjō capital of a large Kantō domain and the center of a fortified city, not merely the location of a keep. By 1590, its Sōgamae enclosed castle and town with roughly nine kilometres of ditches and earthworks. Toyotomi Hideyoshi's campaign ended Hōjō rule, after which Tokugawa-period lords remade the inner castle in early-modern stone and tile. Most buildings were dismantled after abolition, and the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake destroyed much surviving masonry. The present park combines protected archaeology, restored moats and reconstructed gates, an early-modern-period castle plan, a 1960 reinforced-concrete keep, and continuing excavation at Goyōmai-kuruwa. These layers must be separated to understand what is Hōjō, Edo-period, modern reconstruction, or still below ground.
