Heritage Walking
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Hiroshima Castle and Shukkeien Garden: Walls, War and Surviving Trees

An outdoor walk through Hiroshima Castle grounds to Shukkeien's entrance. It does not enter the keep or the garden. North of the Peace Memorial Park, it passes the rebuilt front gate, trees that lived through the atomic bomb, fire-scarred stones, the wartime command bunker, the shrine, the foundations of the Imperial General Headquarters, the concrete keep, ending at the gate of Shukkeien garden. Eight stops, all outdoors.

This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.

At ~50 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Hiroshima makes a full-day itinerary.

Visiting Hiroshima Castle and Shukkeien Garden: Walls, War and Surviving Trees — hours, tickets and getting there

  • Opening hours Castle grounds are a public park · Ninomaru turrets 09:00–17:30 (Apr–Sep), 09:00–16:30 (Oct–Mar), last entry 30 min before · Shukkeien 09:00–18:00 (16 Mar–15 Sep), 09:00–17:00 (16 Sep–15 Mar), last entry 30 min before
  • Ninomaru reconstructed buildings: closed 29–31 December; additional closure on 8 December 2026. Shukkeien: closed 29–31 December.
  • Admission The walk itself is free · Ninomaru turrets free (shoes off inside) · Shukkeien ¥350 adults, ¥150 university students, free for high-school age and under and for 65+ with ID · garden + museum set: ¥660 for adults, ¥350 for university students; check separately for special exhibitions
  • The castle keep closed on 22 March 2026 because its concrete and equipment had deteriorated — you can view it from outside
  • Shukkeien is free on 4 May and 3 November
  • The 2026 Hiroshima Castle chrysanthemum show runs 24 October to 8 November in the Ninomaru

Checked 2026-11. Always confirm on the official site before you go.

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Hiroshima, Japan · ~50 min · 1.5 km · 8 stops

Stops on this walk

1. Gomon Bridge & the Front Gate

A wooden bridge and gate rebuilt in 1991, at a castle that gave the city its name.

Look across the moat at the wooden bridge, and at the gate beyond it with a long building set on top. The bridge is Gomon-bashi, and the gate is Omote-gomon, the front gate. The castle's guide calls this a yagura gate, a gateway with a guardhouse built over it. Neither is original. A gate from the Edo period stood here until the morning of August 6, 1945. The atomic bomb destroyed it, along with the castle's other surviving gates and turrets. The gates and turrets were lost, but their stone walls remained. The gate and the bridge you see were rebuilt in wood and finished in December 1991. The builders worked from pre-war photographs, old drawings and the results of excavation. The castle itself is much older. It was founded by Mori Terumoto, a warlord who ruled much of the Chugoku region of western Japan. The castle's official history says he visited Osaka Castle and the Jurakudai palace in 1588. He is said to have realised then that his old stronghold, Koriyama Castle, was out of date. He chose this flat delta at the mouth of the Ota River instead. Work began in 1589, and the castle's history says that is when the place was named Hiroshima. Terumoto moved in in 1591, and the work was completed in 1599. The castle came to be nicknamed Rijo, Carp Castle. It once had three rings of moats, and this inner moat is the only one left. Most of the outer moat was filled in by 1911. From 1912, streetcars ran on the land where its water had been.

The castle grounds are a public park. The bridge is narrow, so step aside from it when you stop.

2. Ninomaru & the A-bombed Eucalyptus

A small walled enclosure rebuilt in wood, and a tree that kept growing beside its burning towers.

You are inside the Ninomaru, the castle's second enclosure. Look at the long, low wooden buildings along its edge. Many castles have a large second enclosure. Here it is small, and the castle's guide explains why. It was built as an umadashi, a small enclosure surrounded by a moat in front of a gateway. It guarded the way into the main enclosure, and it was a base for troops riding out to fight. The buildings around you were rebuilt in wood between 1989 and 1994, as they looked in the Edo period. The single-storey turret beside the gate is the Hira-yagura. The long one is the Tamon-yagura, about sixty-three metres from end to end. At the far corner stands the Taiko-yagura, the drum tower. A drum was beaten there to tell the time, and to signal the opening and closing of the castle gates. Until 1945, the front gate, part of the long turret and the drum tower were still standing here from the Edo period. The atomic bomb burned them all. The buildings were lost, but their stone walls remained. In 1953 the Ninomaru was designated a national historic site, together with the main enclosure. Now look for the tall eucalyptus inside this enclosure. The city's register of A-bombed trees lists it about seven hundred and forty metres from the hypocenter. The castle's guide says it lived through the bombing while the Ninomaru buildings right beside it were burning. In 1971 a typhoon snapped off its top, and it sprouted again.

The rebuilt turrets can be visited inside. They are wooden buildings, so you take off your shoes at the entrance.

3. Center Gate Site & the A-bombed Willow

Stones turned red and cracked by the fire of August 6, and a hollow willow that still grows.

Look at the large stones at the sides of this gateway. Some of them are reddish, and some are cracked. This is the site of the Naka-gomon, the Center Gate, the way into the main enclosure from the south. In the early 1930s it was still one of the castle's few buildings left from the Edo period. On August 6, 1945, it burned. The castle's guide says the heat of that fire turned the stones red along with the gate, and split them. Beside the path grows a willow of a kind called marubayanagi. The city keeps a register of the trees that survived the bombing, with each tree's distance from the hypocenter. It lists this one about seven hundred and forty metres from the hypocenter. The castle's guide says it survived while the Center Gate and the Ninomaru buildings were in flames. It still grows green leaves, but its trunk is badly damaged and hollow. By 1945 the main enclosure beyond this gate was no longer a samurai residence. From the 1870s it had been an army base, filled with barracks and offices. The castle's history says the keep, about one kilometre from the hypocenter, collapsed. Most of the military buildings were made of wood. The buildings collapsed and burned. The castle's history says about ten thousand soldiers in the former castle grounds are believed to have died. These stones were here that morning, and they still carry its marks.

Please do not climb on the stones or touch the tree. Both are protected parts of the historic site.

4. Air-Defense Operations Room

A half-buried operations room where mobilized schoolgirls worked, said to have sent the first report of Hiroshima's devastation outside the city.

Look at the low concrete structure, half sunk into the ground. This was the air-defense operations room of the Chugoku Regional Military Headquarters. It was set up inside the castle near the end of the Pacific War. In 1945 the headquarters of the Chugoku Regional Military District and the Fifty-ninth Army were established in the main enclosure. From here, air-raid warnings for the five prefectures of the Chugoku region were issued and lifted. Codes were analysed here, and messages went out to army units. Schoolgirls worked here. The castle's history names the schools whose students were mobilised to work at this headquarters. They came from Hijiyama Girls' High School, from the girls' high school and the women's college of Hiroshima Jogakuin, and from Hiroshima Women's College. Many of them were killed by the atomic bomb. The room itself was semi-underground and strongly built, and it was not destroyed. The castle's history says a Hijiyama student inside it sent a message to army units in Fukuyama, and in Zentsuji on the island of Shikoku. The message said that Hiroshima had been wiped out by a new type of bomb. The castle's history describes this as possibly the first report of the bombing to leave the city. In February 2024 this room was designated a national historic site, as one of the Hiroshima atomic bomb sites. Near its entrance stands a memorial to the people of the headquarters and the mobilised students.

This is a place of mourning. Please keep your voice low near the memorial.

5. Hiroshima Gokoku Shrine

A shrine for the war dead, burned in 1945 and rebuilt on the castle site in 1956.

Look at the shrine buildings in front of you. This is Hiroshima Gokoku Shrine. Gokoku means protecting the nation. The shrine honours people who died in Japan's wars, and it has stood on the castle site only since 1956. The shrine's own history begins in December 1868, during the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration. Seventy-eight men who died in that war, including Takama Shozo, were enshrined at a new shrine in Futaba-no-sato. In 1875 it became a government-supported shrine for the spirits of the war dead. In 1934 it moved to the western edge of the army's West Parade Ground, near where the old municipal baseball stadium was later built. In 1939 it took its present name. On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb exploded in the sky close to that site, and every shrine building burned. Worship carried on at a small shrine on the same ground. As the city was rebuilt, the shrine had to move. Donations were collected from people across the prefecture, and in the autumn of 1956 new buildings went up here. The main halls in front of you were rebuilt again and completed in April 1993. The shrine says it honours about ninety-two thousand people who died in Japan's wars, up to the Pacific War. Among them are about ten thousand mobilised students, members of the women's volunteer corps and others, killed by the atomic bomb while on labour service. The shrine also holds weddings, and in November the Shichi-go-san blessing for young children.

At the main hall, the shrine's custom is to bow twice, clap twice and bow once.

6. Imperial General Headquarters Site & the A-bombed Hollies

Foundations of the building where the emperor directed a war in 1894, and the hollies planted in front of it.

Look at the low stone foundations in the grass. This is the upper level of the main enclosure, the heart of the castle. In the Edo period the Honmaru palace stood here. It was both the domain's government office and the lord's residence. In 1877 the army put up a two-storey wooden building in Western style on this spot, as the headquarters of the Hiroshima garrison. It later became the headquarters of the Fifth Division. When war with Qing China began in 1894, that building became the Imperial General Headquarters, the body through which the emperor directed the war. Emperor Meiji arrived in Hiroshima in September 1894, and the headquarters stayed here until April 1895. In October 1894, an extraordinary session of the Imperial Diet was called in Hiroshima. Why Hiroshima? The castle's history points to transport. Ujina port, which could take large ships, had opened in 1889. In June 1894 the Sanyo Railway reached Hiroshima, and in August a temporary military line linked the city to the port. Troops and supplies could go by rail straight to the ships. In 1896 it was decided to preserve the building permanently, and in 1926 it was designated a historic site. The atomic bomb knocked it down. Only these foundation stones remain. Now look for the holly trees nearby. The city registers kurogane holly here as A-bombed trees, about nine hundred and ten metres from the hypocenter. The castle's guide describes an A-bombed kurogane holly that stood in front of the headquarters.

The foundations are part of the historic site. Please stay off the stones.

7. The Keep & the Original Foundation Stones

A concrete keep rebuilt in 1958, and the stones that once held up the wooden original.

Look up at the five-storey keep at the corner of the walls. It looks old, but it is a concrete building from 1958. This walk looks at it from the outside. The original keep was built of wood. The castle's guide says it had five storeys, with two smaller three-storey keeps on its south and east sides, joined to it by corridors. The two smaller keeps were pulled down in the Meiji era. The main keep survived, and in 1931 it was designated a National Treasure. On August 6, 1945, the keep stood about one kilometre from the hypocenter, and it collapsed. The Japan Tourism Agency's guide says research suggests the blast destroyed the pillars of the lower floors, and the rest of the building fell in. For several years after the war, the stone base stood empty. In 1951 a simple wooden copy was put up for a sports and culture exposition, and taken down afterwards. The castle's history says it made people want the keep back. In 1958 the outside was rebuilt in reinforced concrete for an exposition marking Hiroshima's recovery, at a cost of about thirty-six million yen. For decades it served as a museum of the samurai culture of Hiroshima. Now look at the large flat stones laid out in the ground nearby. They are foundation stones of the old keep, the bases that held up its pillars. They were taken from the keep's stone base during the rebuilding of 1957 and 1958, and set out here. The castle's guide says the stones set lower show where other stones still lie buried in the base.

The foundation stones are part of the historic site. Please look at them from the path.

8. Shukkeien Garden Gate 縮景園

The garden of the Asano lords, begun in 1620, destroyed in 1945 and restored over thirty years.

Look at the garden gate in front of you. Behind it lies Shukkeien, the garden of the Asano lords of Hiroshima. Work on it began in 1620, the year after the Asano family arrived. The first lord, Asano Nagaakira, built it as the garden of a separate residence. He gave the design to his senior retainer Ueda Soko, a samurai who was also known as a master of tea. The name means shrunken scenery. The garden's account says it may come from a preface by the Confucian scholar Hayashi Razan, about drawing sea and mountains into one place. The garden's account also mentions a connection with the West Lake in China. The following features are inside the garden. A large pond holds small islands, crossed by an arched stone bridge. The garden's guides say the pond's water comes from the Kyobashi River to the north. It is close to the sea, so the water is brackish, and carp share the pond with mullet. A great fire in 1758 destroyed many of the garden's buildings. In the 1780s a gardener from Kyoto reworked it, with the stone bridge at its centre. In 1894, when the Imperial General Headquarters moved into Hiroshima Castle, this garden was named its reserve headquarters, and its Seifukan hall became the emperor's quarters. In 1940 the Asano family gave the garden to the prefecture, and it was designated a Place of Scenic Beauty. Five years later the atomic bomb wrecked almost all of it, and many people died in and around the garden. The stone bridge held. Restoration began in 1949, the garden reopened in 1951, and the work took about thirty years. If you go in, look for three trees that lived through the bombing, a great ginkgo, a black pine and a muku tree. A memorial to the victims stands near the river.

The garden charges admission, so the pond, the bridge and the surviving trees are for those who go in. Drones and alcohol are not allowed inside.