Osaka Castle

I went to Osaka on May 1, and stayed until the third. I didn't have a set agenda in mind, but I did know that I wanted to see the castle.

I visited Osaka Castle on the second, which turned out to be a fortuitous choice. The holidays of Golden Week are April 29 (みどりの日, Green day), May 3 (憲法記念日, Constitution Day), and May 5 (こどもの日, Children's Day). There's also a "National Holiday" (国民の休日) on May 4. Because May 2 isn't an official holiday, many people had to work, and school was in session, so it wasn't very crowded.

Osaka Castle is unique among the castles I've seen in Japan, in that the interior is completely modernized. The other castles I've visited (Himeji, Nijo, and Matsue) were restored or rebuilt using the building materials of the time of their original construction, i.e. wood. The interiors were dimly lit, and stairwells were very steep. (Castle towers were not everyday living spaces. During times of siege and assault, the people living in the castle grounds would retreat to the tower, and the stairwells were built in such a way as to hinder attackers. Kind of silly, really, considering that castles were made of wood, and attackers could -- and did -- just set fire to them.)

Osaka Castle, on the other hand, was rebuilt from scratch in 1931. Designed as a museum, the exterior is authentic to the appearance of castle towers of the Warring-States Era, but it is built of steel-framed reinforced concrete. The interior is brightly lit, and the stairs are easily manageable. And, if you are sick and tired of stairs (as I often was on trips like this), there's an elevator that you can take to the top.

Most castles I've seen have a small Shinto shrine on the top floor. Osaka castle has a gift shop.


This is a picture of Osaka Castle Park from the top floor of Osaka Castle. In the foreground, you can see a kin no shachi-gawara (金の鯱瓦), a mythical carp-like fish said to bring good fortune. The big domed building in the background is the Osaka Castle Hall. (Jonny Rasmussen remembers watching U2 there many years ago.)

つづく (to be continued...)