Most Japanese chestnuts have difficult-peeling pellicles, which make it time-consuming and costly to remove the pellicle from the nut during processing. Therefore, an easy-peeling pellicle has been an important goal of Japanese chestnut breeding programs. In previous studies, we identified the peeling locus, which controls peelability in Japanese chestnut. Homozygous recessive plants (p/p) have an easy-peeling pellicle. Here, we developed a novel simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker, CmSca06716, which is suitable for the selection of pellicle peelability in Japanese chestnut. We also constructed a fine map of Tsukuba-43 and localized the peeling locus within a 1.1-cM region between SSR markers CmSca05637 (or CmSca01731) and CmSca03291. The CmSca06716 marker co-segregated with the peeling locus in all F₁ plantlets of a ‘Porotan’ × Tsukuba-43 cross. The peeling region was located within a 1.5-Mb region of chromosome 1 in two Chinese chestnut genome assemblies. The 394-bp allele of CmSca06716 was linked in the coupling phase to the recessive easy-peeling allele (p) possessed by ’Porotan’, ’Porosuke’, and ‘Yakko’, which are easy to peel, and in their relatives. We also identified three new cultivars that were heterozygous for the 394-bp allele at the CmSca06716 locus and the p allele at the peeling locus. Furthermore, we developed a cost-efficient and rapid marker-assisted selection system and applied it to our breeding program for Japanese chestnut. This information will lead to a better understanding of the genetic control and physiological mechanisms underlying pellicle peelability in Japanese chestnut.