Osaka on 2 February 1868
Osaka Castle was a Japanese castle in Osaka, Japan, built in 1583 by Hideyoshi Toyotomi. The castle was a stronghold of the Toyotomi until its fall to the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1615; it remained a symbol of power until the army of Emperor Meiji seized and razed the castle in the Fall of Osaka in 1868.
History[]
Osaka in 1615
Osaka Castle was built in 1583 by Hideyoshi Toyotomi on the ruins of the former Ikko-Ikki Ishiyama Hongan-ji shrine, and he modeled it after Azuchi Castle, the stronghold of the former Nobunaga Oda. In 1597 construction of Osaka was completed, the same year that Hideyoshi died. His son Hideyori Toyotomi inherited the castle on his father's death while he was only an infant; in 1600, a coalition (the Eastern Army) led by Ieyasu Tokugawa laid siege to the castle and captured it before the Battle of Sekigahara later in the year. Osaka remained the Toyotomi clan's home under the early phases of the Tokugawa Shogunate, but in 1615 the now-mature Hideyori gathered the last remaining Toyotomi loyalists in the castle and rebelled against Ieyasu. The Osaka Campaign followed, and the castle was conquered after a long and bloody siege in which both armies suffered heavy losses. Hideyori committed seppuku, and the Tokugawa took over the castle for themselves. In 1620, Hidetada Tokugawa began to reconstruct and rearm the castle, and by 1868 it was a major Tokugawa stronghold.
The port of Osaka in 1868
In February 1868, during the Boshin War, a 2,100-strong army of Imperial forces under Saigo Takamori besieged the castle, defended by Takenaka Shigekata and Matsudaira Sadaaki and 6,094 troops. The Satsuma found the Tokugawa forces outside of the castle to be weak, and they completely surrounded the fortress after defeating the Shogunate units on the roads. Matsudaira Sadaaki ordered for the bridges to be blown up by gunpowder stored in their towers, but the Satsuma were able to destroy the gunpowder stores in the castle and entered the fortress over the last surviving bridges. As the last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu watched from USS Iroquois in the harbor, the castle was burnt to the ground. By 1997, the castle was rebuilt with concrete and housed a museum on the inside, but it no longer functions as a fortress.