Nishinomaru Garden

This guide to Nishinomaru Garden at Osaka Castle begins in 1660, when lightning struck the western citadel's gunpowder store and blew it apart in a single flash, leaving shogunate engineers with a fortress that could destroy itself from the sky. It traces their answer, a storehouse built entirely of stone and sealed plaster, finished by 1685, and the earlier history of this ground as the residence of Nene, wife of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Two watchtowers from 1620, Sengan Yagura and Inui Yagura, still guard the garden's edges today.