"The buildings were bombarded by cannon and burned.
When Tokugawa took control, he rebuilt the complex on
top of the existing walls (so none of the walls you
see there today are the Toyotomi originals, although
they have excavated some of these)." The castle was
rebuilt but it wasn't simply reconstructed. The outer
walls remained the same, but the tenshaku was larger
and placed differently to that of the Toyotomi-period
Osaka castle."
That's correct about the tenshaku-it was a different
color too (black-Toyotomi, white-Tokugawa). The
Tokugawa one also bit the dust (struck by lighting in
the 1600's) and didn't get rebuilt until the 1930's.
However, the outer walls are not the Toyotomi
originals. The Tokugawa covered the entire complex
with dirt (building a small mountain on top) and under
the guidance of Todo Takatora built all new ones. Many
of the stones have the mon of the lord who was
responsibile for constructing that section of wall,
and the Osaka Castle museum actually inspected and
catalogued EVERY SINGLE STONE!!! in the walls a few
years back. Why? Seems symbolic more than anything
else. The old walls were perfectly good. As stated
earlier, they have conducted excavations and uncovered
some of the Toyotomi walls.
Several publications sold at the Osaka-jo museum have
great diagrams of all this. Gakken also just released
a new book that recreates the Toyotomi version of the
citadel with computer graphics.
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