June 16-17, 1971: Hiroshima, Japan
	June 13-15, 1971: Kyoto, Japan
	Return to the Index for the Japan Trip

The second stop on my tour of southern Japan was the commercial city of Osaka- only about an hour trip from Kyoto Central Station.

From Kyoto to Osaka

After visiting Mt. Hiei in Kyoto, I collected my things from the ryokan and by late morning was back at Kyoto Central Station for the short trip further southwest to Osaka, Japan.

When I got to the station I went to the JTB office to get my ticket to Osaka. That is where I took this picture of the young lady in the travel office figuring up the cost of my ticket. I thought the picture was particularly amusing as this young girl had a brand new electric calculator sitting on the desk in front of her yet she preferred to use her abacus to do the figuring. I have to admit, her fingers moved more quickly than I might have thought possible.

The trip to Osaka took about an hour on a typical Japanese intercity train. Osaka is the financial center of Japan. Since much of the city was destroyed during the war, Osaka today is largely a new, modern metropolis. It is also a pretty big city, with over three million people. My guidebook said that good ryokans are hard to find in Osaka, it being a much newer city than Kyoto, so I asked the JTB people to let me try a modern Japanese hotel. They put me in a hotel called The Osaka Grand. The building was quite Western, but the furnishings and service were Japanese.

Before I get to the pictures I took during my two-night stay here in Osaka, I want to say a few things about Osaka itself.

Of all the places I have been in Japan, Osaka was the hardest for me to locate on maps or aerial views the places I went- except, of course, for Osaka Castle, which is the major historical site in the city.

I have looked at today's aerial views of the city, and have compared them to my pictures. What I have come to understand is that Osaka has changed so much in the half-century since my visit that almost nothing (excepting the historical sites) that I saw is still there. Below you will see a picture of an elevated highway over a canal. I have scanned the aerial views of today's downtown Osaka and the roadway in my photos seems no longer to be there.

I got my hopes up for doing some sleuthing when I got to the series of pictures that I took from the Observation Deck of Osaka Tower- a structure similar to (but shorter than) Tokyo Tower. I thought that all I had to do would be to locate it on Google Maps and then compare my pictures to the streets and structures nearby.

For some reason, I could not locate it on Google Maps, so I looked for it on Wikipedia. I got the bad news when I read:

"Osaka Tower was an observation and radio tower built beside the headquarters of Asahi Broadcasting Corporation in Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan. It also relayed radio communication the taxi companies."

The operative word is "was"; the tower was demolished in 2009, and I could find no former address for it. I even looked for the old address of Asahi Broadcasting, but they moved to a different location in 2008. So I apologize that I'm not able to show you where many of my Osaka pictures were taken. The first three pictures were taken after I checked into my hotel and when I went out for a walk around the city:

One of the canals that runs through Osaka, and part of the highway system that runs along it, all very near my hotel in that city.

A typical street scene in Osaka.

I am continually impressed with the difference between Korea and Japan. If you were to take away all the signs that are written in Japanese characters, and replace them with signs in English, then this scene could be any city in the United States. The same cannot be said of Seoul, for example. Things are so different there that even if everything were in English, you could tell immediately that you were in some foreign place.

Here is another view of one of the streets along one of the waterways that run through Osaka.

Osaka is the third most populous city in Japan, with a population approaching 2 million. It is the fourth-largest city that I have ever walked around in. Interestingly, the top three cities were also all during my time in Korea- Tokyo, Seoul, and Yokohama.

Osaka has been traditionally considered Japan's economic hub, going as far back as the 4th century; it also served briefly as the imperial capital. Following the Meiji Restoration, Osaka began to rapidly expand in size and economic importance. Severely damaged during WWII, the postwar period saw Osaka make noted contributions to redevelopment, urban planning and zoning standards. Just in my short time walking around, I can see that construction is going on everywhere.

There is a lot to see and do in Osaka and, like most places I have been in Japan, I could easily have stayed here for a week to see and appreciate all of them. But with just one full day and two nights, I'm going to have to choose just a few places to visit. In this, I've relied on the guidebook to help me. At the top of my list will be Osaka Castle. But I also want to visit Osaka Tower (situated near Tennoji Park), and the site of Expo 70, a reportedly sight to see a few miles north of downtown.

I also want to say that the weather during my time here in Osaka was not very cooperative. It was cloudy and overcast most of the time, particularly, it seemed, when good weather was most necessary (as when I went to the top of Osaka Tower). The same thing had been true on my first trip here to Japan, and I guess I'd hoped that on this visit, in early summer as opposed to the dead of winter, the weather would have been much improved. But at least here in Osaka, as in Kyoto a day ago, this was not to be the case.

I have one other Osaka city scene that I want to include here, and I took the picture as I was walking over to Osaka Castle on the second day of my stay. That picture is at right.

I had no idea why there would be a rainbow of different colored poles outside what appeared to be a typical office building. At least not until I saw the name on the building- which was, fortunately, written in both Japanese characters and in English. That name was FujiFilm.

This was the headquarters of the company, a major competitor of Kodak, whose recognizable green-and=white film boxes one always finds alongside Kodak's just about everywhere film is sold. I assume that the rainbow of colors is a reference to how Fuji film accurately displays the colors in the pictures taken with it.

I thought that the poles might provide a good color test for my camera, and that's why I took the picture.

Osaka Tower

I probably should not have visited Osaka Tower in a late afternoon; I might have gotten better pictures if I'd gone there in the morning or at midday, but I didn't plan things out very well. (NOTE from 2022: As I mentioned above, Osaka Tower no longer exists; it was demolished in 2008-2009.)

Osaka Tower was an observation and radio tower built beside the headquarters of Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan. It also relayed radio communication for Osaka's the taxi companies.

The tower was 520 ft high. Built in 1966, it was constructed with metal tubing in a quadratic lattice structure and was designed to handle vibrations very high wind velocities. I wanted to go up to the 350-foot level where there is/was a two-story observation deck.

The tower cost $50 million and was finished in 1966. It had an elevator that could carry 30 people at a time up to the observation deck, which in turn, could accommodate 270 people.

For many years after my visit, thousands of people visited the tower almost every day, and for almost 20 years the ABC network's "morning show" was broadcast from a studio below the observation deck. I have tried to locate on current maps and aerial views the buildings and streets I photographed from the tower, but I have had little success.

The observation deck was closed to the public in 1997 as a security measure; there were numerous times after the mail bomb incident in 1994 that temporary closures were needed. In 2008, the tower was scheduled to be removed, when the headquarters of ABC moved to the outskirts of Osaka. It was finally demolished in 2009.

Osaka at Night

Osaka Tower is adjacent to Tennoji Park, but when I came down from the tower it was getting too late to do much exploring of its zoo and conservatory. Leaving the Tower and walking back North as evening fell, a very light rain was falling, and my curiosity got the best of me quite often and I made a number of stops in the little shops along the streets.

Coca Cola is everywhere, but if you look real closely, you can find Pepsi, too.

Another of the many canals that run through Osaka, Japan

At the Site of Expo 70

Expo '70 was a world's fair held on a site a few miles north of downtown Osaka between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of this, the first world's fair held in Japan, was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." The Expo was designed by more than a dozen Japanese architect Kenzō Tange, assisted by 12 other Japanese architects.

The Expo attracted international attention for the extent to which unusual artworks and designs by Japanese avant-garde artists were incorporated into the overall plan and individual national and corporate pavilions. The most famous of these artworks is artist Tarō Okamoto's iconic Tower of the Sun, which you can see in a couple of my photos (and which still stands in 2022).

The ride up to the fairgrounds was on a most modern train-subway system, the Fair terminus being on the second floor of a very modern hotel complex. It is a short bus ride to the Fair itself. Even though most of the exhibits were either closed or dismantled, a few permanent ones were still open.

Osaka was chosen as the site for the 1970 World Exposition by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in 1965. A large site in the Senri Hills outside Osaka had been earmarked for the fair, a Theme Committee was formed, and a Master Plan was commissioned. The fair was later lauded for its layout, variety of pavilions and other attractions- including the Tower of the Sun- the fair's own observation platform.

I did wander around the area of the fair for a while, even though I couldn't visit the now-closed national pavilions. One of the nicest areas was a Japanese Garden built for the fair, and the garden also had a small restaurant in it where I had lunch:

Note the Restaurant hidden in the trees.

More of the Japanese Garden

Sadly, almost all the pavilions had long since closed, and many of them had actually been dismantled. But I did walk to the far side of the lagoon to get a look back south across the area:

The Site of Expo 70 in Osaka

Osaka Castle

Osaka Castle is a Japanese castle in the center of Osaka. The castle is one of Japan's most famous landmarks and it played a major role in the unification of Japan during the sixteenth century of the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

As you can see from the high-level map at left, you can see where the castle is positioned vis-a-vis downtown Osaka; it is easily walkable from just about anywhere in the downtown core.

The castle is open to the public and is easily accessible by trolley, bus, and taxi. It is a popular spot during festival seasons, and especially during the cherry blossom bloom (hanami), when the sprawling castle grounds are covered with food vendors and taiko drummers. The large indoor arena, Osaka-jō Hall, also is located within the grounds of the castle park.

The history of Osaka Castle has been a long and extremely important one. It began in 1583 when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a samurai and feudal lord and one of the two great "unifiers" of Japan, commenced construction on the site of the Ikkō-ikki temple of Ishiyama Hongan-ji. The basic plan was modeled after Azuchi Castle, the headquarters of Oda Nobunaga, another feudal lord and the other great "unifier" of Japan.

Hideyoshi wanted to build a castle that mirrored Nobunaga's, but surpassed it in every way: the plan featured a five-story main tower, with three extra stories underground, and gold leaf on the sides of the tower to impress visitors. In 1585 the Inner donjon was completed. Hideyoshi continued to extend and expand the castle, making it more and more formidable to attackers. In 1597 construction was completed and Hideyoshi died the year after. Osaka Castle passed to his son, Toyotomi Hideyori.

In 1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated his opponents at the Battle of Sekigahara, and started his own shogunate in Edo. In 1614 Tokugawa attacked Hideyori in the winter, starting the Siege of Osaka. Although the Toyotomi forces were outnumbered approximately two to one, they managed to fight off Tokugawa's 200,000-man army and protect the castle's outer walls. Ieyasu had the castle's outer moat filled, negating one of the castle's main outer defenses.

Perhaps this would be a good time to pause in the historical narrative and take a look at the layout of the castle area. At left is an aerial view of the castle complex, circa 2020; I have rotated it so that south is to the left; doing so gives you a better view of the castle itself and you'll be able to compare the actual castle to my photographs.

The main tower of Osaka Castle is situated on a plot of land roughly a half-mile square. It is built on two raised platforms of landfill supported by sheer walls of cut rock, using a technique called Burdock piling, each overlooking a moat. The central castle building is five stories on the outside and eight stories on the inside, and built atop a tall stone foundation to protect its occupants from attackers.

The Main Tower is surrounded by a series of moats and defensive fortifications. The castle has 2 moats (an inner & outer). The inner castle moat lies within the castle grounds, and consists of 2 types: a wet (northern-easterly) and dry (south-westerly). The outer moat meanwhile surrounds the entire castle grounds, denotes the castle's outer limits, and consists of 4 individual water-filled sections, each representing a cardinal direction (North, East, South, West).

Getting back to the castle's history, during the summer of 1615, Hideyori began to restore the outer moat. Ieyasu, in outrage, sent his armies to Osaka Castle again, and forced the Toyotomi men back inside the outer walls. Eventually, Osaka Castle fell to the Tokugawa clan, the Toyotomi clan perished, Hideyori commited ritual suicide, and the castle buildings burned to the ground.

In 1620, the new heir to the shogunate, Tokugawa Hidetada, began to reconstruct and re-arm Osaka Castle. He built a new elevated main tower, five stories on the outside and eight stories on the inside, and assigned the task of constructing new walls to individual samurai clans. The walls built in the 1620s still stand today, and are made out of interlocked granite boulders without mortar. Many of the stones were brought from rock quarries near the Seto Inland Sea, and bear inscribed crests of the various families who contributed them.

Construction of the 5 story tenshu (the tenshu is the highest tower in a castle; in Europe, these are often referred to as the castle "keep") started in 1628 and was completed 2 years later, about the same time as the rest of the reconstruction. In all this reconstruction, the general layout of the original Toyotomi structure was followed.

The castle grounds, which cover approximately 15 acres, contain thirteen structures that have been denoted as “important cultural assets” by the Japanese government- the two main gates, five different turrets, the Kinmeisui Well, Kinzo Storehouse and Enshogura Gunpowder Magazine, and three sections of the castle wall.

The outer moat has two main sentry checkpoints: the Aoyamon Gate (in the north-east) and the Otemon Gate (in the opposing south-west).

Between the outer and inner moat are the following: Fushimi-yagura Turret Remains, Ensho-gura Gunpowder Storehouse, Osaka Geihinkan, Hoshoan Tea House, Osaka Castle Nishinomaru Garden, Sengan-yagura Turret, Tamon-yagura Turret, Remains of Taiko-yagura Turret, Osaka Shudokan Martial Arts Hall, Hokoku Shrine (Osaka), Ichiban-yagura Turret (The first turret), and the Plum Grove.

There are two places to cross the inner moat, Gokuraku-bashi Bridge (located in the North) and Sakuramon Gate (main sentry point in the South). As you can see in today's aerial view above, there are also smaller structures at the corners of the inner moat, and at left is a picture I took of one of them. Within the inner moat, the castle was divided into two major areas: the Hommaru (Inner Bailey) and the Yamazato-Maru Bailey. A bailey or ward in a fortification is a courtyard enclosed by a curtain wall. In particular, an early type of European castle was known as a motte-and-bailey. Castles can have more than one bailey, as does Osaka Castle. Located within the Hommaru Bailey is the Main Tower, the Kimmeisui Well, the Japanese Garden, the Takoishi (Octopus Stone), the Gimmeisui Well, the Miraiza Osakajo Complex, the Kinzo Treasure House, and the "Timecapsule Expo'70". Within the Yamazato-Maru Bailey one finds the Marked-Stones Square, and the Monument commemorating 'Hideyori and Yodo-dono committing suicide' (undoubtedly the only monument I will ever encounter devoted to anyone performing such an act).

To bring the history of Osaka Castle up to the present, we find out that in 1660, lightning ignited the gunpowder warehouse and the resulting explosion set the castle on fire. Lightning struck again in 1665, and this time the tenshu was burnt down. In 1843, after decades of neglect, the castle got much-needed repairs when the shogun collected money from the people of the region to rebuild several of the turrets. In 1868, Osaka Castle fell and was surrendered to imperial loyalists, bringing the era of feudal lords and shogunates to an end. Much of the castle was burned in the civil conflicts surrounding the Meiji Restoration.

Under the Meiji government, Osaka Castle became part of the Osaka Army Arsenal (Osaka Hohei Kosho) manufacturing guns, ammunition, and explosives for Japan's rapidly expanding Western-style military. In 1931, the tenshu was rebuilt using modern ferroconcrete techniques. During World War II, the arsenal became one of Japan's largest military armories, employing 60,000 workers. American bombing raids targeting the arsenal damaged the reconstructed main castle tower. On August 14, 1945, a bombing raid destroyed 90% of the arsenal and killed 382 people who were working there. But, as you can see in my pictures, Osaka Castle has been repaired and rebuilt.

I spent quite some time walking around the Osaka Castle complex. I was running out of film, and did not see anyplace nearby where I could buy more, so I limited my picture-taking. But here are two more views of the castle and castle complex:

My Reactions to Osaka

As I prepared to leave Osaka to go next to Hiroshima, I had a chance to reflect on what I had seen here. I had learned in high school and college history classes that Osaka had suffered a great deal in the last year of WWII; a great deal of the city was heavily bombed. I saw no evidence at all of this destruction.

Perhaps this is not surprising; after all, 25 years have passed since the end of that conflict. The city seemed to me to be a modern, vibrant, bustling metropolis. Osaka began a subway system in 1933, and by the time of my visit was quite extensive and still expanding. In short, I found a fully 20th-century city with all the infrastructure and facilities you might see in any advanced nation- a situation made all the more impressive from the fact that the city was essentially demolished in 1945.

But all that aside, I am off to the next stop on my tour of Southern Japan- a city that suffered even more damage than Osaka- Hiroshima. I have no idea what I will find.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	June 16-17, 1971: Hiroshima, Japan
	June 13-15, 1971: Kyoto, Japan
	Return to the Index for the Japan Trip