Osaka Castle

This guide to Osaka Castle traces the winter of 1614, when an inscription on a temple bell in Kyoto convinced Tokugawa Ieyasu that the Toyotomi family, still holding this castle, had cursed him, and he marched an army of over a hundred thousand men to these walls. It follows Toyotomi Hideyori and his mother Yodo-dono through the siege that followed, and the peace Ieyasu swore in blood, letting Hideyori keep the castle even as his men quietly filled in the moats around it. Listen at the reconstructed granite walls, stacked without mortar in the 1620s and still standing today.