The Kakegawa area has been a regional commercial center within
Tōtōmi Province since at least the
Kamakura period, but developed as a
castle town under the
Imagawa clan, whose headquarters was in neighboring
Suruga Province.
Kakegawa Castle was built by
Asahina Yasuhiro, a retainer of
Imagawa Yoshitada, in the
Bunmei era (1469–1487). The castle later fell into the hands of the
Tokugawa clan, but was then given to
Toyotomi clan retainer
Yamauchi Kazutoyo in 1580. After the establishment of the
Tokugawa shogunate, the
Kakegawa Domain was created, and ruled by numerous
fudai daimyō. The area prospered during the
Edo period, as the
Tōkaidō highway connecting
Edo with
Kyoto passed through Kakegawa, whose
post stations included
Nissaka-shuku and
Kakegawa-juku. Neighboring
Yokosuka Domain, a smaller
fudai holding, was also located within what are now the city limits of Kakegawa. After the
Meiji Restoration, Kakegawa was made part of the short-lived Hamamatsu Prefecture in 1871, which merged with Shizuoka Prefecture in 1876. Kakegawa Town was created in the cadastral reform of April, 1891, four years after the opening of
Kakegawa Station on what later became the
Tōkaidō Main Line railway. The town expanded steadily over the years, annexing neighboring villages and towns in
Ogasa District, and was elevated in status of that of a city in 1954. On April 1, 2005, the towns of
Daitō and
Ōsuka (both from
Ogasa District) were merged into Kakegawa. ==Government==