Osaka
Japan has about one hundred castles, only about a dozen of which are in their original condition (never destroyed). The castles and castle ruins remaining today span different periods of history and castle construction. Osaka castle is the second most important fortification in Japanese history, and it was destroyed and rebuilt several times.
From Friday, December 16-to-Sunday, December 18, 2022, I visited the Japanese city of Osaka for the first time. When I let it be known that I was traveling to Osaka, many people asked if I was going to see this or that, or they recommended that I visit that or this. But I primarily wanted to see Osaka castle. That’s why I went. I went to see the castle.
And, incidentally, while I was there I did take the time to go downtown and see the Dontonbori Canal and the Ebisu Bridge - a bridge made famous by so many young people jumping off it into the canal when they get excited, like to celebrate sports victories or defeats. Dontonbori is intense. It’s sort of like a mix of Tokyo’s Kabukicho and Takeshita dori.
Osaka is the largest city in western Japan, and is at the heart of a metropolitan area stretching from Kyoto to Kobe that is home to more than 20 million people (less than half the size of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area). Almost 400 km from Tokyo, the convenient bullet train can make a visit there just a day trip. Go early on the bullet train, then take a taxi from Shin-Osaka Station to the castle when you arrive, then spend hours visiting the Castle Park, eat, drink, buy souvenirs and use the toilets the facility provides, then return directly to the station by taxi when you’re done and catch the bullet train back to Tokyo. You’d arrive back in Tokyo in the evening of the same day. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make a weekend trip of it, alone, to relax in a hotel and enjoy myself.
My hotel on the Okawa River was within easy walking distance of the Castle Park, and when I arrived (hours before check-in time), I stowed my bag and immediately skedaddled to the castle park. The weather wasn’t optimal. Friday afternoon’s weather was good, and that’s when I took my best pictures. The plan was to spend all day Saturday moseying about, and that’s what I did. But it was cloudy, rainy and cold. But it couldn’t be helped. When I departed on Sunday, the weather was bright and sunny. Damnit!
I took almost 900 pictures over two days, deleted over a third of them, and spent many hours in my hotel room editing, sorting and saving pictures, and posting pictures to Facebook. It was a long and tedious chore, but ...
On the way home on Sunday 18th, my train was delayed by an equipment-related power outage that temporarily suspended all Tokaido shinkansen service. I got stuck at Toyohashi, east of Nagoya, for more than four hours. Operations resumed around 5:00 p.m., long past the time I planned to be home already. Oh, well. It got progressively darker outside as the afternoon wore on and we didn’t move. The interior lights were mostly shut off to save stored battery power. It was creepy and dark inside, like an airplane fuselage, but quieter, cleaner and more comfortable. Train staff opened some doors to let in fresh air. I bought a pork cutlet sandwich from the attendant lady. The passengers were quiet and patient. English-Chinese-Korean announcements on board directed us to the internet for information. But the internet said very little - only that service was suspended due to a power cut, then an estimated time of service resumption (a time that was repeatedly revised).
In the civil war era of Japanese history, there are three main characters - war lords, not emperors - who each vied to unite the nation under his own rule: 1) Oda Nobunaga (1534 - 1582), 2) Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537 - 1598), and 3) Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 - 1616). Not a triumvirate, because they were competitors, not associates. They were smart and educated, clever and tough, cultured and persistent, brutally, murderously violent and psychopathic.
Osaka castleis a big deal in Japanese history. It was Toyotomi Hideyohi’s base, built in the late-1500s. If he had succeeded (which he didn’t), the capital city of Japan today would be Osaka, not Tokyo. His great rival was Tokugawa Ieyasu. Hideyoshi died of natural causes in1598. The Emperor declared Tokugawa Ieyasu the Shogun after his victory in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, but under Hideyoshi’s son Hideyori’s leadership, the Toyotomi clans continued to resistance the leadership of the Tokugawas, which led to the destruction of Osaka castle and of the entire Toytomi clan in the Siege of Osaka (1614-1615). Hideyori and his mother, Yodo-dono, were forced to commit ritual suicide by disembowelment. The spot is marked today by a small stone in the castle grounds. I’m not sure how many people see it, though. I knew there was such a marker before I went, and during my two days there I walked everywhere and explored every nook and cranny.
The second Tokugawa shogun, Hidetada, began re-building and re-arming the castle for his own use in the 1620s, to serve as his base in the west. It remained in use in one form or another until the mid-1800s. The castle was burned once more in the civil conflicts of the Meiji Restoration that saw the downfall of the Tokugawa family and the introduction of a parliamentary government. The Meiji Restoration is the beginning of modern Japan.
Osaka castle was destroyed in 1615 by cannon. Cannon were rare in Japan due to the expense of obtaining them from foreigners, and the difficulty in casting such weapons themselves as the foundries used to make bronze temple bells were simply unsuited to the production of iron or steel cannon. The few cannon that were used were smaller and weaker than those used in European sieges, and many of them were in fact taken from European ships and remounted to serve on land; where the advent of cannon and other artillery brought an end to stone castles in Europe, wooden ones endured in Japan much longer. Traditionally, archery duels preceded hand-to-hand samurai combat. But in the early modern period the coordinated use of firearms and cannon cemented the idea of battle at a distance, and introduced the idea of defeating a fortification through siege - by starving the occupants out. The siege of Osaka castle demonstrated that the idea of battle at range had arrived.
With the destruction of Osaka castle, Tokugawa Ieyasu was the first to fully unite mainland Japan under one stable hegemony, using Edo (Tokyo) as his base. When Tokugawa chose Edo, it was a small, relatively insignificant fishing town. But, like Osaka, it was strategic, so he built the huge Edo castle and projected his power from there, while the Emperor resided at the Kyoto Imperial Palace, basically a luxurious prison, under the thumb of the generalissimo. The Imperial Palace grounds in central Tokyo today are the remains of the old Edo castle, which no longer exists except for its moats and walls. So, I was expecting Osaka castle to be comparable to Edo castle in size. But it wasn’t. It was smaller than I expected. Oh, sure, it was big and has impressive moats and walls and all, but not nearly as big as Edo. In addition, nothing is authentic and original. Everything you see is a modern reconstruction. That’s because 1) the long history of civil war meant that things got destroyed repeatedly, and 2) because the traditional building materials featured wood and paper, lending themselves to combustion - accidental use of fire, earthquakes leading to fire mishaps, lighting and, of course, war. Historical plaques situated throughout the park tell you that such-and-such used to occupy this spot, and such-and-such that spot. But there’s nothing to see. And, everything that can be seen is a reconstruction. The castle keep as it stands today is a 1931 cement and steel reconstruction. It looks nice, though, even though it’s fake. The walls had to be repaired and the moats re-excavated. And the gates all had to be rebuilt. At its peak, the castle walls featured many turrets, only a few of which remain.
During the Second World War, the castle was used as the Headquarters for the Imperial Army’s 4th Army Command, and an arsenal. That attracted bombing raids by the USAAF. Today, you can still see bullet damage in the wall’s stones from American strafing. A sign points out the marks.
Osakans stand on the right side of the escalator.
Osaka Castle Park has commercialized itself tremendously: entry tickets, gift shops, restaurants, on-site food vendors. By comparison, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo has not. Maybe that’s because the Imperial Palace is currently occupied and used. It’s grounds and gardens are public space, whereas the Osaka Castle Park is operated as a business by the city.
Osakans stand on the right side of the escalator. Tokyoites stand on the left. In Japan, traffic is supposed to move on the left, but Osakans have to be different. I used the subways there a little bit and I quickly adapted. But sometimes I forgot. The Osaka subway system was easy to use, but tedious. Tedious, because I just didn’t know the system. It has taken me years and years to become familiar with Tokyo. It would take a similar amount of time to become familiar with Osaka. Anyway, with bilingual and clear maps available, plus maps and information from the intern et, I was able to get around easily. For the most part, though, I walked to the castle from my hotel, then walked around the park there. I was exhausted by the end of Saturday’s excursions, and I napped for a couple of hours in my hotel room before trying to edit photographs.
The castle was not crowded when I visited. Visitors were mostly Japanese, including at least one junior high school group, and there were only a few Western foreigners. But I was interested in the great number of Koreans there. So many Koreans everywhere! Incidentally, Toyotomi Hideyoshi twice attacked China unsuccessfully through Korea. His Korean campaigns were his greatest failures, so maybe there is some irony in Korean visitors coming to his stronghold today. Typically, signage and pamphlets were available in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English.
Just like Hiroshima, which I visited a few years ago, the bulk of Osaka lies south of the bullet train station, Shin-Osaka Station. That’s where all the biggest urban development is, south of the station. The name “Osaka” literally means “large hill,” or “large slope,” and the castle occupies naturally high ground overlooking the river delta, the port and the coast. The landscape was altered and augmented by human engineers over the centuries as the fortress (built atop a formerly heavily fortified temple) was built up with extra height, plus concentric defenses of outer and inner walls and moats. To build there in the first place requires at least three conditions: 1) a strategic location. There must be a reason to be there, like dominating, guarding and controlling a transportation route, a harbor, or a river mouth; 2) a defendable location. The location must be defendable. And, 3) a water source. There MUST be a drinking water source. The castle sits close to the south bank of the Yodo River, with Osaka Bay in close proximity. Of course, there has been a lot of landfill over the centuries, extending the shoreline further out into the salt water bay. In its heyday, it was much closer to the sea than it is now, which is also true of Edo castle in Tokyo.
In popular culture, the 1955 film Godzilla Raids Again, Godzilla’s battle with Anguirus leads onto the castle grounds. The inner tower, or keep collapses when Godzilla pins Anguirus against it. Then, in the 1966 film Gamera vs. Barugon, the titular monsters’ first encounter is at the site of the castle. The castle appears in a two-part iconic 1966 television series, Ultraman, where the titular hero does battle with the monster Gomora on the castle grounds. Finally, in 1975, British novelist James Clavell used the castle and its environs (circa 1600) as a major plot location for his most famous work of historical fiction, Shogun. I think some filming was done there for the 1980 TV miniseries based on the novel, starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune.