History
This is the cradle of the samurai age. Within a short distance of Nagoya, three of the most important figures in all of Japanese history were born within a single generation — Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlords who ended a century of civil war and unified the country around 500 years ago. Their castles and battlefields remain to this day: Nagoya Castle with its golden shachihoko, Okazaki Castle (Ieyasu’s birthplace), and Inuyama Castle, whose wooden keep is one of the oldest still standing in Japan. Just beyond, in Mie, the Ise Grand Shrine has been the country’s most sacred Shinto site for some 2,000 years.
