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The castle is situated on a plot of land roughly one kilometer square. It is built on two raised platforms of landfill supported by sheer walls of cut rock, 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 sword-bearing attackers.

1 History

• 1583: Toyotomi Hideyoshi commenced construction on the site of the Ikko Ikki temple of Honganji . The basic plan was modeled after Azuchi Castle, the headquarters of Oda Nobunaga. Toyotomi wanted to build a castle that mirrored Oda'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.
• 1585: Inner donjon completed. Toyotomi continued to extend and expand the castle, making it more and more formidable to attackers.
• 1598: Construction completed. Hideyoshi died. Osaka Castle passed to his son, Toyotomi Hideyori.
• 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated Hideyori's armies at the Battle of Sekigahara, and started his own bakufu in Edo.
• 1614Events April 5 In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe. October 11 Adriaen Block and a group of Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the area he explored and named " New Nether: Tokugawa attacked Hideyori in the winter. Although the Toyotomi forces were outnumbered 2 to 1, they managed to fight off Tokugawa's 200,000-man army and protect the castle's outer walls. However, Tokugawa attempted to muzzle Toyotomi by filling up the castle's outer moat, rendering it largely defenseless.
• 1615Events June 2 First Recollet missionaries arrive at Quebec City, from Rouen, France. June 4 Forces under the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu took Osaka Castle in Japan. The second volume of Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote is published. End of the Sengoku Period in J: During the summer, Hideyori began to dig the outer moat once more. Tokugawa, in outrage, sent his armies to Osaka Castle again, and routed the Toyotomi men inside the outer walls on June 4June 4 is the 155th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (156th in leap years), with 210 days remaining. Events 780 BC The first historic solar eclipse is recorded in China. 1039 Henry II becomes King of Germany. 1615 Forces under the shogun Tokugawa. Osakajo fell to Tokugawa, and the Toyotomi clan perished.
• 1620Events September 6 English emigrants on the Mayflower depart from Plymouth, England for the future New England and arrive at the end of the year. The Mayflower Compact is signed on November 11. November 8 The Battle of White Mountain Two officers of the B: The new heir to the shogunate, Tokugawa HidetadaTokugawa Hidetada ( , 1579 1632) was the 2nd shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate who reigned from 1605 to 1623 during the early Edo period of Japan. He was third son of the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu. His father Ieyas, began to reconstruct and rearm 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 1620's still stand today, and are made out of interlocked granite boulders with no mortar whatsoever: they are held together solely by each other. Many of the stones were brought from rock quarries in the Seto Inland Sea, and bear inscribed crests of the various families who laid them into the walls.
• 1665Events March 4 Start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War March 6 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication March 16 Bucharest allows Jews to settle in the city in exchange of annual tax of 16 guilders June 3 The Duke of York defeats the: Lightning strikes burned down the main tower.
• 1843Events February 6 The first minstrel show in the United States The Virginia Minstrels opens (Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City). February 11 Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi premieres in Milan May 18 The Disruption of the Church of Scotland took place: After decades of neglect, the castle got much-needed repairs when the bakufu collected money from the people of the region to rebuild several of the turrets.
• 1868: Much of the castle was burned in the civil conflicts surrounding the Meiji Restoration. Under the Meiji government, Osaka Castle was converted to a barracks for Japan's rapidly-expanding Western-style military.
• 1928: The main tower was restored after the mayor of Osaka concluded a highly successful fund-raising drive.
• 1945: Bombing raids on Osaka damaged the reconstructed main tower.
• 1995: Osaka's government approved yet another restoration project, with the intent of restoring the main tower to its Edo-era splendor.
• 1997: Restoration was completed.