Osaka Castle

Overview

Osaka Castle — 大坂城, read Ōsaka-jō — is a Japanese castle in Chūō-ku, Osaka. Construction began in 1583 under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who was completing the unification of Japan, and the castle stood until 1868, the year the Tokugawa shogunate fell. It is counted among the three great castles of Japan and appears on the list of the 100 Fine Castles of Japan.

The castle belongs to the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–1603), the era named for the two strongholds of the unifiers: Azuchi Castle, built by Oda Nobunaga, and Momoyama, the hill in Kyoto where Hideyoshi built his residence. Osaka Castle was the political centre of Hideyoshi's rule and, after his death, the last redoubt of his heir.

History

Hideyoshi began work on the castle in 1583, in the eleventh year of the Tenshō era (天正, Tenshō). He chose the site for command of the Yodo River and the routes into western Japan, and built on a scale meant to overawe the rival daimyō — the regional lords — whose cooperation he needed.

After Hideyoshi died, his young son Toyotomi Hideyori held the castle, protected by a circle of loyal retainers. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had emerged as the dominant power, moved against him. The Winter Siege of Osaka (1614) ended in a negotiated settlement that left the castle's outer defences filled in; the Summer Siege of Osaka (1615) ended with the castle taken and the Toyotomi line destroyed. Among those who died there were Hideyori himself, his mother Yodo-dono, and retainers including Ōno Harunaga, Mōri Katsunaga, Ujiie Yukihiro and Akita Toshisue. Hideyori had been born at the castle, and it was also his place of death. The Ōzaka Domain later used the site as its headquarters.

The castle that stands today is a reconstruction. The Tokugawa rebuilt it, and the present main keep is a twentieth-century architectural reconstruction. The castle ceased to function as a fortress in 1868, when the Tokugawa regime collapsed.

What Stands There Today

The castle sits inside Osaka Castle Park, in the Ōsaka-jō area of the city. The grounds contain the Osaka Castle Museum, the Osaka Geihinkan — a guest house — and Hōkoku Shrine (豊国神社, Hōkoku-jinja), which honours Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

The main keep, rebuilt in concrete, serves as the museum, with exhibits on the castle's history and the Toyotomi period. The stone walls, moats and gates that survive are largely Tokugawa work, since the Toyotomi castle was destroyed in 1615. The park is one of the city's main gathering places, and the castle is the most recognisable landmark in Osaka.

The Name in Japanese

The castle's name is written 大坂城. It is read おおさかじょう in kana, and romanised as Ōsaka-jō. The same name is also written 大阪城 with an alternative second character; both are read Ōsaka-jō.

The name breaks into three characters:

大 — read ō here. The character means "big" or "great". On its own it is usually read ōkii as an adjective, but in compounds it often appears as ō or dai.

坂 — read saka here. The character means "slope" or "hill". The place name Ōsaka is commonly explained as "big slope", a reference to the terrain of the area. Note that in this spelling the second character is 坂, the slope; the modern city name is usually written 大阪 with 阪, a character that also means "slope" but is reserved largely for place names.

城 — read jō here. The character means "castle". In Japanese castle names it appears as a suffix, as in 姫路城 (Himeji-jō) and 熊本城 (Kumamoto-jō). On its own the character can also be read shiro, the everyday word for a castle.

So the whole name is "great slope castle" — a place name plus the word for castle. When Japanese speakers say the name in full, the -jō is voiced as part of the compound, and the first element carries the pitch accent of the place name Ōsaka.

Visiting and Context

Osaka Castle is in Chūō-ku, the central ward of Osaka, at coordinates 34.6872222, 135.5258333. It is reached easily from the city's main rail and subway lines, and the surrounding park is free to walk through, with the museum in the main keep charging admission.

For learners of Japanese, the castle is a useful anchor for the vocabulary of the Sengoku period — the "warring states" era of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Words that recur in any account of the castle include 城 (shiro, castle), 天守 (tenshu, main keep), 大名 (daimyō, regional lord), 武将 (bushō, military commander) and 包囲 (hōi, siege). The castle's two sieges, the Winter Siege of Osaka and the Summer Siege of Osaka, are known in Japanese as 大坂冬の陣 (Ōsaka fuyu no jin) and 大坂夏の陣 (Ōsaka natsu no jin), using 陣 (jin), meaning a camp or a military campaign.

The castle's place in the language is tied to its place in history: it was the stage on which the Toyotomi era ended and the Tokugawa era began, and the words for that transition are still the words students meet in the first textbooks that touch on early modern Japan.