Osaka Castle

Japan once had 30 - 40 thousand castles, most of them built in medieval time. Today only 12 original castle buildings (tenshu) remain.
The castles tell the history of Japan and the Osaka castle is in this history a very important milestone.
It was built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) a man born by a peasent who became the ruler who finally after many years of fights unified Japan.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi built the Osaka Castle in 1582, however the castle has been destroyed and rebuilt several times after. The Main Tower you can see on the Panorama was reconstructed from 1928 to 31 financed by contribution from the citizens of Osaka. Again after Word War II the Tower had to be renovated as late as 1995 -97. Today the Main Tower is a modern historic museum.'

Links:
The Castles of Japan | Osaka Castle Main Page | Osaka Tourist Guide
JapanNationalTouristOrganisation Osaka

The photographer Shiraki Shigeru is the creator of The japanese Castle Trek a beautiful Website both in Japanese and English with panoramas, historical data and links about the Japanese castles. Most of the links are to Japanese sites but below I collected some in English about Osaka and the Japanese Castles.