Okayama Castle 岡山城
Black and gold, ‘the crow’: it burned in 1945 and was rebuilt in 1966 from pre-war drawings.
Built on the orders of Ukita Hideie, one of the five great vassals of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, between 1590 and 1597. The original tenshu was destroyed in the bombing of Okayama on 29 June 1945; the 1966 exterior reconstruction was based on survey drawings that a Waseda architecture student from Okayama had made as a thesis before the war. Two original structures survived and are National Treasures: the moon-viewing turret (月見櫓) and the Nishinomaru Nishite turret (西丸西手櫓). The castle grounds are a national historic site.
Okayama
Okayama
