Hiroshima "Carp" Castle, Hiroshima (must see)

Hiroshima Castle, commonly known as "Carp Castle," was constructed beginning in 1589 under the direction of Mōri Terumoto, a powerful feudal lord who chose the delta of the Ōta River as the center of his new domain. Completed toward the end of the 16th century, the castle became the political and administrative center of the settlement that developed into modern Hiroshima.

Hiroshima Castle is an example of a hirajiro, or flatland castle, built on level ground rather than on a hill or mountaintop. Its defensive system originally included three concentric moats, stone walls, gates, towers, and several fortified enclosures. The Ōta River, including the branch now known as the Honkawa River, also formed part of the surrounding natural defenses. Much of the outer castle complex disappeared during the modernization of Hiroshima in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when two of the three moats were filled in.

After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Mōri Terumoto lost control of the castle, which subsequently passed to Fukushima Masanori. From 1619 until the end of the feudal era, Hiroshima Castle was governed by successive generations of the Asano family, the lords of the Hiroshima Domain. During the Meiji period, the grounds were converted into a military complex, and the Imperial General Headquarters was established there during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895.

On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb exploded approximately 980 meters from Hiroshima Castle. The original wooden keep and the remaining historic buildings were destroyed, although some stone walls, foundations, trees, and other traces of the former complex survived. A reinforced-concrete reconstruction of the main keep was completed in 1958. Its exterior reproduced the general appearance of the lost tower, while the interior was adapted to house a museum devoted to Hiroshima’s development as a castle town, its feudal lords, samurai culture, and everyday life during the Edo period.