Building of Osaka Castle

Also called: Ōsaka-jō

Toyotomi Hideyoshi began building Osaka Castle on the site of the Ishiyama Hongan-ji. With its gilded keep it became the base of the Toyotomi regime and the symbol of the ruler of the realm.

Having won leadership of the Oda vassals at Shizugatake, in 1583 Hideyoshi began a castle at the tip of the Uemachi plateau, where the Ishiyama Hongan-ji had stood until its surrender after ten years of war with Nobunaga. Built with labour levied from many daimyo, it had by about 1585 a keep decorated with black lacquer and gold leaf, and merchants gathered below it turned Osaka into a great commercial city. Hideyoshi became imperial regent (kampaku) in 1585 and grand chancellor in 1586, receiving the surname Toyotomi.

The Toyotomi castle burned in the Osaka campaign of 1615. The Tokugawa buried it under earth and built a new castle from 1620, whose keep was in turn destroyed by lightning in 1665. The present keep is a reinforced-concrete reconstruction of 1931, paid for by public subscription and modelled on the Toyotomi keep shown in the Osaka Summer Campaign screen; the stone walls and moats are Tokugawa work.