Naniwa Palace — The Uemachi Plateau, 7th Century CE — Artist's Reconstruction
Osaka Castle Walks with Edward — Continental Cross-Reference Edition

The Uemachi Plateau
A Deep Time Timeline

Japan, China & Korea — seven thousand years of the same ridge, the same question

Quick Answers

The Uemachi Plateau beneath Osaka Castle has been a seat of power for roughly 7,000 years. Dry ground above the floodplain, between two river systems feeding Osaka Bay, it drew Jōmon settlers, imperial storehouses, Naniwa Palace, the Ishiyama Honganji fortress, and finally Toyotomi Hideyoshi's castle — each civilisation choosing the same ridge for the same geographic reasons.

Why was the Uemachi Plateau chosen for settlement?

The ridge was dry ground above the floodplain, positioned between two river systems draining to Osaka Bay. That geography offered defence, clean land, and control over the routes to the interior and the sea — the same logic that drew every subsequent civilisation to the site for 7,000 years.

What came before Osaka Castle on this site?

The sequence runs from Jōmon settlement around 5000 BCE to Hoenzaka's sixteen imperial storehouses in the 400s CE, Naniwa Palace in the 600s, the Ishiyama Honganji fortress in 1496, and finally Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Osaka Castle from 1583 — each built on the same commanding ground.

How did Japan, China, and Korea connect through this place?

The plateau was the gateway through which continental influence entered Japan — the Korean Peninsula acted as the cultural bridge carrying wet-rice agriculture, bronze and iron technology, writing, and Buddhism. Naniwa became the port where ideas from China (via Korea) landed and were transformed.

Why did the plateau's 7,000-year reign end?

On 4 June 1615 the Toyotomi clan fell and the castle burned; Tokugawa search teams entered the ruins looking not for survivors but for named ceramic tea caddies — the Hatsuhana and Nitta jars. Power moved to Edo permanently, ending the Uemachi Plateau's seven millennia as Japan's most important place.

Experience This History in Person

Explore the stone walls, hidden moats, and battleground sites with a resident historian who lives beside Osaka Castle. Small groups. English. Max 6 guests.

Book Before Japan Had a Name

Forty Thousand Years — To Scale

Scroll sideways. Card widths follow a logarithmic scale, so the deep time of the Paleolithic and Jōmon eras stays visible beside the ten-year thinness of Taishō. Linked eras open their in-depth pages on this site.

Paleolithic
c. 38,000 – 14,000 BCE
Land bridges, stone tools, and mobile hunter-gatherer bands.
Jōmon
c. 14,000 – 300 BCE
Cord-marked pottery, sedentary fishing and foraging, post-glacial warming.
Yayoi
Early 1st millennium BCE – 300 CE
Rice cultivation, metalworking, and increasingly complex communities transform the Kawachi Plain.
Kofun
300 – 538 CE
Keyhole tombs and centralized clan polities.
Asuka
538 – 710 CE
Arrival of Buddhism and the Taika Reforms.
Nara
710 – 794 CE
First permanent capital and literary records.
Heian
794 – 1185 CE
Imperial court culture, the Tale of Genji, and Tenjin Matsuri.
Kamakura
1185 – 1333 CE
First shogunate and the Mongol invasions.
Muromachi
1336 – 1573 CE
Ashikaga shogunate and the Sengoku civil wars.
Azuchi-Momoyama
1573 – 1603 CE
Unification under Nobunaga and Hideyoshi.
Edo
1603 – 1868 CE
Tokugawa shogunate, peace, and urban culture.
Meiji
1868 – 1912 CE
Imperial restoration and rapid modernization.
Taishō
1912 – 1926 CE
Taishō democracy and brief liberalism.
Shōwa
1926 – 1989 CE
WWII, post-war recovery, the economic miracle.
Heisei & Reiwa
1989 – present
Contemporary era of technology and change.
China
Japan / Plateau
Korea
Continental Influence Event
China
Japan — Uemachi Plateau
Korea
Prehistoric — Before Writing
c. 5000–2000 BCE Neolithic China
Yangshao & Longshan Pottery Cultures
Sophisticated painted pottery cultures along the Yellow River. The ceramic traditions that will eventually reach Japan via Korea begin here. The Dawenkou black pottery tradition is the earliest ancestor of the ceramics that will end up in Osaka's Museum of Oriental Ceramics four thousand years later.
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c. 5000 BCE On Tour
Jomon Settlement — The Plateau Chosen
First settlement on the Uemachi ridge — dry ground above the floodplain, between two river systems draining to Osaka Bay. The same geographical logic that will drive every subsequent civilisation to choose this specific ground. The Western Roman Empire will not exist for another five thousand years.
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c. 4000–300 BCE Jeulmun & Mumun Periods
Korean Peninsula — The Cultural Bridge
Korea sits between China and Japan geographically and culturally — the conduit through which continental ideas, technologies, and peoples will flow into Japan for the next two thousand years. Pottery traditions, bronze working, and eventually Buddhism all travel this route.
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Early 1st millennium BCE
Yayoi Period — Continental Package Arrives
Yayoi culture arrives — wet-rice agriculture, bronze and iron technology, and intensified trade networks. Early Yayoi farming communities are already established across the Kawachi Plain, the rice-growing landscape below the plateau (Inaba in Higashi-Osaka, Nishifukui in Ibaraki). The plateau's position controlling river access to the interior and Osaka Bay becomes more strategically valuable than ever.
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Ancient — Han, Three Kingdoms & Asuka
206 BCE – 220 CE Han Dynasty
Han China — The First Superpower Template
The Han dynasty establishes the model of centralised imperial bureaucracy, Confucian governance, and the Mandate of Heaven that Japan will eventually copy through the Taika Reform. Han ceramics — including the earliest funerary mingqi — are the foundation of what Umino Nobuyoshi will eventually collect and donate to Osaka's ceramics museum.
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c. 400s CE On Tour
Sixteen Imperial Warehouses — Hoenzaka
Sixteen government storehouses on the Hoenzaka slope, documented in the Nihon Shoki. Receiving goods from the Asian continent via Osaka Bay. The Western Roman Empire collapses in 476 CE while these warehouses are already operating. The trade infrastructure precedes the palace by a century.
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313 – 668 CE Three Kingdoms Period
Goguryeo, Baekje & Silla
Three rival kingdoms compete for the peninsula. Each has its own relationship with China and Japan. Baekje has the closest relationship with Japan — it is from Baekje that Buddhism, Chinese writing, and the continental cultural package will formally arrive in Japan in 538/552 CE.
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Buddhism Transmitted → Baekje (Korea) → Japan, 538/552 CE → Arrives at Naniwa
581 – 618 CE Sui Dynasty
Sui Reunification — The Immediate Model
The short-lived Sui dynasty reunifies China after centuries of division — the direct model for Emperor Kotoku's Taika Reform. The Sui's centralised bureaucratic state, with its census, tax system, and road network, is what Japan copies almost exactly in 645 CE. The Sui's costly wars with Korea contribute to its rapid collapse, making way for the Tang.
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593 CE On Tour
Prince Shotoku Builds Shitennoji
Japan's first Buddhist temple built in Naniwa — on the plateau. Buddhism deployed as a tool of imperial power, legitimising centralised government. The seed of a thousand years of Buddhist political accumulation is planted here, in the same ground that Nobunaga will finally clear in 1580.
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618 – 907 CE ★ Tang Dynasty
Tang China — The Civilisational Template
China's golden age. Chang'an — the Tang capital — is the largest, most cosmopolitan city in the world. The Tang model of centralised imperial bureaucracy, the Mandate of Heaven, equal-field agricultural system, civil service examinations, and Buddhist state religion becomes the direct template for Japan's Taika Reform. Japanese envoys — kentoshi — travel to Chang'an for decades, returning with 1,700 Chinese texts. Nara and then Kyoto are built as direct copies of Chang'an's grid layout.
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645 CE On Tour
Taika Coup — Naniwa Palace & the Fujiwara
Nakatomi no Kamatari and Prince Naka no Oe overthrow the Soga clan. Emperor Kotoku launches the Taika Reform — Japan's first Tang-style centralised state. Naniwa Palace built on the plateau. Kamatari granted the surname Fujiwara on his deathbed. The reform is explicitly modelled on Tang China — the same Tang China that is at its peak across the sea.
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668 – 935 CE Unified Silla Dynasty
Silla Unifies Korea — Tang Alliance
Silla unifies the peninsula with Tang military support, then drives out Tang forces — a remarkable diplomatic manoeuvre. Silla becomes a Tang tributary state, absorbing Chinese culture, Buddhism, and administrative systems while maintaining independence. Korean monks travel to Tang China and return to Japan — Buddhism's journey is China → Korea → Japan, layered and transformed at each step.
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Tang Model → Chang'an grid copied for Nara (710) and Kyoto (794) → Mandate of Heaven → Japanese Emperor
710 CE
Capital to Nara — Buddhism Grows Powerful
Capital established at Nara, modelled directly on Tang Chang'an. Emperor Shomu builds the Great Buddha at Todaiji and orders Buddhist temples in every province — funding the very institutional power that will eventually threaten the throne. Japanese monks travel to Tang China; Saichō returns in 804 with tea seeds — the first planting of what becomes Japan's tea culture.
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Heian Period — Tang Decline, Song Rise, Fujiwara Power
907 CE Tang Falls
Tang Dynasty Collapses
The Tang collapses after the An Lushan rebellion and decades of regional fragmentation. Japan had already sent its last official embassy to Tang China in 894 — partly because the Tang was clearly failing. Japan's cultural borrowing from China essentially pauses. The influence already absorbed — Buddhism, writing, city planning, governance — is now being digested and transformed into something distinctly Japanese.
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794 CE
Emperor Kanmu Moves to Kyoto
Capital moved to Heian-kyo to escape Nara's Buddhist political power — the very power the imperial family created through land grants. Kyoto designed on the Tang Chang'an grid. Enryakuji founded on Mt. Hiei immediately. The problem follows the court. Buddhism arrives in Kyoto before the emperor has unpacked.
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918 – 1392 CE ★ Goryeo Dynasty
Goryeo — The Celadon Masters
The Goryeo dynasty produces what many consider the finest ceramics in East Asian history — Goryeo celadon, with its distinctive jade-green glaze (bisaek). These are the pieces that Ataka Eiichi will spend his life collecting 800 years later for what becomes the Museum of Oriental Ceramics. The 793-piece Ataka Collection, core of Osaka's museum, is primarily Goryeo and Joseon ceramics.
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960 – 1279 CE ★ Song Dynasty
Song China — Zen, Tea & the Ceramics Golden Age
China's most sophisticated cultural era. The Song produces the world's finest ceramics — Ru ware with its legendary sky-blue glaze, Longquan celadon, and the refined aesthetic that Japanese collectors will prize above all others. Powdered matcha tea culture flourishes in Song Zen temples. The Japanese monk Eisai will bring both Zen Buddhism and tea seeds back from Song China in 1191, transforming Japanese culture permanently.
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858 – 1086 CE
Fujiwara Dominance — 400 Years
Child marriages, engineered abdications, the Kampaku invented to control adult emperors. Ten emperors in under 100 years. Fujiwara no Michinaga — grandfather of three emperors — writes: "This world, I think, is indeed my world — like the full moon I shine, uncovered by any cloud." Lady Murasaki, a Fujiwara herself, writes the Tale of Genji from inside the gilded cage.
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Song Zen + Tea → Eisai returns from Song China, 1191 CE — brings Zen Buddhism & matcha → Japanese Tea Ceremony Born
1086 CE
Insei System — Emperor Outmanoeuvres Fujiwara
Emperor Shirakawa abdicates but keeps governing as retired emperor — stepping outside the Fujiwara trap entirely. Political judo: the Fujiwara's own tool of abdication turned against them. But the solution creates new problems — multiple competing retired emperors, rival imperial factions inviting military clans into court politics to settle disputes.
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Medieval — Genpei War, Shogunates & the Tea Revolution
1191 CE Song Dynasty
Eisai Returns — Zen & Tea Arrive in Japan
Japanese monk Eisai returns from Song China with Zen Buddhism (Rinzai school) and matcha tea seeds. Tea had died out in Japan after the last Tang embassy in 894. Now it returns transformed — no longer merely medicinal, but woven into Zen monastic practice. Caffeine helps monks stay awake during meditation. Tea and Zen become inseparable: Chazen Ichimi — "tea and Zen are one."
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1180 – 1185 CE
Genpei War — The Hinge Point
The Minamoto and Taira clans — built on tax-exempt agricultural wealth the court created — fight for supremacy. Minamoto wins. The emperor becomes permanently ceremonial. Military government established in Kamakura. The template for Japanese governance for the next 700 years: emperor legitimises shogun, shogun protects emperor. Real power never returns to Kyoto until 1868.
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1231 – 1259 CE Goryeo / Mongol Invasions
Mongol Invasions of Korea
The Mongols devastate Korea over nine invasions. Goryeo survives but as a vassal state. The Mongols will subsequently attempt to invade Japan twice — 1274 and 1281 — using Korean ships and Korean soldiers. Both fleets are destroyed by storms the Japanese call kamikaze — divine wind. Japan's first experience of existential external threat.
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1271 – 1368 CE Yuan Dynasty (Mongol)
Mongol China — Blue & White Porcelain Emerges
The Mongol Yuan dynasty transforms Chinese ceramics — blue and white porcelain, using cobalt imported from Persia, emerges in this period. The aesthetic revolution in Chinese ceramics that will eventually reach Japan's tea ceremony culture and meibutsu collecting begins here. Chinese ceramics are now being made for export to Islamic markets — globalisation of luxury goods.
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1336 – 1573 CE
Ashikaga Shogunate — Tea Ceremony Develops
The Ashikaga shoguns rule from Kyoto. Their patronage creates the cultural framework for the tea ceremony, Noh theatre, and ink painting. Chinese Song ceramics — karamono — become the most prized objects in Japan. The meibutsu system develops: named objects accumulate political value through ownership history. The tea caddies that Ieyasu searches for in Osaka's ashes in 1615 acquire their significance in this era.
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1392 – 1897 CE ★ Joseon Dynasty
Joseon Korea — White Porcelain & the Tea Bowl
The Joseon dynasty produces the white porcelain and rough tea bowls that Japanese tea masters — following Zen wabi aesthetics — will prize above all others. The Korean moon jar becomes the most coveted object in Japanese collecting. Asakawa Noritaka discovers this beauty in 1913 and dedicates his life to preserving it. Hideyoshi's Korean invasions of 1592–1598 abduct Korean potters — the technology transfers to Japanese kilns by force.
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Song & Goryeo Ceramics → Karamono (Chinese) & Koraimono (Korean) — most prized meibutsu objects in Japan → Museum of Oriental Ceramics
1496 CE On Tour
Ishiyama Honganji — Buddhist Fortress on the Plateau
Jodo Shinshu Buddhist sect establishes a fortress temple on the Uemachi Plateau — the same ground as Naniwa Palace. Over a century it becomes a self-governing religious city — so formidable that Portuguese Jesuit Luís Fróis ranked it among the strongest fortresses he had seen in Japan. The 900-year arc of Buddhist political accumulation — from Shotoku's Shitennoji in 593 to this fortress — reaches its final form here.
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Sengoku Period — The Three Unifiers & the Ceramics of Power
1368 – 1644 CE Ming Dynasty
Ming China — Blue & White at Its Peak
Ming blue and white porcelain reaches its artistic apex — the pieces that Hideyoshi, Nobunaga, and Ieyasu compete to possess as meibutsu. The Jingdezhen kilns produce for the entire world. Portuguese Jesuits arrive in China and Japan simultaneously — Luis Frois describes Osaka Castle in 1586 with the same wondering eyes that his colleagues use for Ming court culture. Two civilisations at their peak encountering each other for the first time.
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1568 – 1580 CE On Tour
Nobunaga Besieges Ishiyama Honganji
Oda Nobunaga — Hideyoshi's boss — besieges the Buddhist fortress for eleven years. The same Buddhist institutional power that drove Emperor Kanmu from Nara in 794 CE, now fully militarised, resists Japan's most powerful warlord for a decade. Honganji surrenders 1580 and burns. Nine hundred years of Buddhist political accumulation cleared in a single fire.
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1592 – 1598 CE Joseon Korea
Hideyoshi Invades Korea — The Pottery Wars
Hideyoshi launches two invasions of Korea — partly geopolitical, partly an obsession with Korean ceramic technology. Japanese forces abduct Korean potters and forcibly relocate them to Japan. These potters establish kilns that transform Japanese ceramic culture permanently. The tea bowls that Sen no Rikyu had championed — rough, Korean-made, wabi aesthetic — are now being produced in Japan by Korean hands. The Museum of Oriental Ceramics collections reflect exactly this moment of forced cultural transfer.
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1583 CE On Tour
Hideyoshi Builds Osaka Castle
Toyotomi Hideyoshi builds on the ashes of Ishiyama Honganji — the same ground as Naniwa Palace, the same ground as the imperial warehouses. Luis Frois: the keep "rises above all like a tower of gold." Sen no Rikyu serves as Hideyoshi's tea master — the peasant warlord and the aesthetic philosopher navigating power together until Rikyu's forced suicide in 1591. The meibutsu system reaches its political peak.
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4 June 1615 CE On Tour
The Fall of Osaka Castle — 7,000 Years Ends
The Toyotomi clan ends. The castle burns. Tokugawa search teams enter the ruins looking not for survivors but for specific named ceramic jars — the Hatsuhana and Nitta tea caddies. Objects that travelled from Chinese kilns through the Ashikaga shogunate to Nobunaga to Hideyoshi to Ieyasu are recovered from the ashes. Power moves to Edo permanently. The Uemachi Plateau's 7,000 years as the most important place in Japan is over.
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Edo Period & Beyond — Legacy & Collection
1644 – 1912 CE Qing Dynasty
Qing China — The Final Ceramics Chapter
Qing porcelain — famille rose, famille verte, refined blue and white — represents the final flowering of Chinese ceramic tradition before industrialisation. The collectors who donate to Osaka's Museum of Oriental Ceramics — Ataka, Iriye, Hakutoro — collect across the full sweep from Han funerary ware to Qing imperial porcelain. The museum's collection is essentially the entire history of East Asian ceramics in one building.
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1615 – 1868 CE
Edo Period — Osaka Becomes the Merchant Capital
Politically sidelined, the plateau finds its final identity: commerce. Osaka becomes Japan's economic engine — the nation's kitchen, the centre of rice trading and merchant culture. The Tokugawa bury the Toyotomi keep under 7.3 metres of fill and build higher. The trade infrastructure that drew every previous power to this ground now sustains a city that no longer needs to be politically central.
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1910 – 1945 CE Japanese Occupation
Asakawa Brothers — Preserving Korean Heritage
During Japanese occupation, brothers Noritaka and Takumi Asakawa — Japanese — devote their lives to documenting and preserving Korean ceramic culture that Japan's occupation is suppressing. Noritaka surveys 700 kiln sites. Takumi dies at 40, his final wish to be buried in Korean soil. Their work eventually reaches Osaka through the Suzuki Masao Collection in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics.
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Today On Tour
You Are Standing on the Same Ground
The ridge is still here. The rivers still flow either side. The bay is still to the south. Seven thousand years of people choosing this specific ground — for shelter, for trade, for power, for war, for god. The castle you see today is the newest thing here. The ceramics in the museum across the city carry the entire story of East Asia in their glazes. Everything beneath your feet is older than you can imagine.
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Historical Reference Index

These reference pages explore individual chapters of Osaka's history in greater depth.


1. Yayoi Period

Yayoi Era History Timeline
The legendary succession dispute that shaped the early Yamato state.

2. Kofun Period

Empress Jingū
Sifting Fact From Folklore in Ancient Naniwa

Emperor Ōjin's Succession Problem
The legendary succession dispute that shaped the early Yamato state.

3. Asuka & Nara Period

The Origins of Shitenno-ji
1,400 Years of Power, Faith, and Survival in Osaka.

The Taika Reforms
How a political revolution transformed Japan.

Empress Shōtoku & Dōkyō
Scholarly consensus, capital shifts, and the official chronicles of the Nara court.

4. Heian Period

Tenjin Matsuri
The story behind Osaka's most famous festival and the scholar who became a god.

5. Sengoku Period

The Oda–Azai Betrayal
Oda, Azai, and the Toyotomi Legacy — bloodlines, shattered oaths, and the path to Osaka's end.

Ishiyama Honganji War Timeline
Ten years of war between Oda Nobunaga and the warrior monks.

6. Azuchi–Momoyama Period

Toyotomi Hideyoshi
The remarkable rise of Osaka Castle's builder.

Toyotomi Hideyori
Born into ultimate luxury as the son of the great unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi, his entire existence became a gilded cage inside Osaka Castle, ending in the dramatic firestorm that birthed the Pax Tokugawa.

7. Edo Period

Sanada Nobushige
The Greatest Warrior in Japan.

Tokugawa Ieyasu
The victor of Osaka Castle and founder of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Continue the Story at Osaka Castle

The shifting alliances, immigrant clans, and continental influences that shaped Japan’s earliest centuries didn’t disappear — they evolved into the political struggles that defined Osaka’s rise as a strategic stronghold.

If you’d like to follow how those forces converged on the ridge where Osaka Castle now stands, Before Japan had a Name follows 7000 years of that story across the very ground where it unfolded.

Continue Exploring

The Uemachi Plateau holds 7,000 years of story — each era in this deep timeline connects to a dedicated page on this site.

Explore All 19 Stories of Osaka's History →

This plateau holds 7,000 years of history. Walk them in one morning.

Walk with a historian who lives beside it. Small groups. Osaka Castle every day • English • Max 6 guests

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Edward Iftody — Osaka Castle’s Resident Historian